In four years under Croydon’s Tory Mayor, the borough’s adult education service has gone from paying its own way to operating a £500,000 overspend – after its landlords, the council, doubled its rent to more than £800,000 a year. ‘It is disgusting how CALAT has been treated by Croydon Council,’ according to one educator. EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
Croydon’s failed Mayor, Jason Perry, and his cabinet of Tory councillors will tonight push through plans to destroy the widely-admired council-run adult education service that has served the borough for more than 70 years.
The rubber-stamping exercise at the council cabinet meeting in the Town Hall Chamber will see classes provided by CALAT – Croydon Adult Learning and Training – outsourced, probably to a cheap, online provider.
Many of CALAT’S near-200 jobs could be put at risk as a result of the Tory Mayor’s blundering move, which puts £4.5million of grant funding in jeopardy. The Mayor’s “cunning plan” has been opposed by the lecturers’ University and Colleges Union and by Natasha Irons, the MP for Croydon East.
Tonight’s meeting is barely a month after piss-poor Perry lied in public, accusing this website of “irresponsible scaremongering” after Inside Croydon reported the Tory-run council’s plans to outsource CALAT, which had gone over-budget for the year by around £500,000.
In early September, Porkie-pie Perry published a note (on Croydon Tories’ social media, not the council’s) saying, “The facts are straightforward: CALAT is not being cut. Its funding is not being reduced. No CALAT jobs are at risk because of the move.”
Yet no one had ever suggested that CALAT’s enforced move from Croydon Clocktower to Strand House in Thornton Heath would be the cause of job cuts.
Outsourcing the education services to an online provider, as Perry has intended to do all along, would see education staff – many of them part-time – and administrators face redundancy. Croydon Council admits as much in the report.
Many connected with the service believe CALAT has been set up to fail this autumn, with fewer expected sign-ups for its courses once it was moved away from the more easily accessible town centre site.
What is probably the most questionable aspect of the proposals by Perry’s council is that £4.5million of CALAT’s total running costs of £5.4million are paid for by grants from the Greater London Authority – money which in future may not be given to Croydon.
Worse still, the main reason for CALAT going over budget in the last couple of years has been because of rent hikes by its landlord… Croydon Council. CALAT’s property costs increased from £410,000 in 2023-2024 to £825,000 in 2025-2026.
With a piece of Baldrick-like “brilliance”, that is income that penny-wise-pound-foolish Perry won’t be getting in future.
Porkie-pie Perry: with his plan to outsource CALAT exposed, Croydon’s Tory Mayor did what he does all to often, and lied on his social media
In 2024-2025, CALAT offered 855 courses. Of those, 465 had fewer than 10 students, against the target of 12 per course. Mayor Perry has been silent on finding ways to encourage more people to take the courses – although his council has blocked CALAT from promoting their offer with Inside Croydon.
According to the council’s own figures, CALAT has 49 permanent employees, four temps and 144 sessional or casual tutors and support staff – a total of 197. The majority of lay-offs are likely to come from teaching staff, few of whom have the protections afforded full-time employees.
The official council report ahead of tonight’s cabinet meeting nails Mayor Perry’s lies from a few weeks ago. Outsourcing adult education will bring “redundancy, TUPE and pension strain costs”, the report says. Croydon Council would have to meet those costs from its resources; it would not be able to use the GLA grant money to lay off staff.
Porkie-pie Perry really cannot help himself. In the preamble to the report recommending the outsourcing of CALAT, the Mayor says, “This proposal is not a cut to adult learning funding.” Except that is exactly what it is.
“‘It is disgusting how CALAT has been treated by Croydon Council,” according to one of the educators.
Under a new provider, it is doubtful whether the number or range of courses would be maintained.
Certainly some CALAT students have seen through Perry’s porkies. “More untruths,” one responded to a council social media post.
“No communication to us self-funded art class learners, except from our teacher.
“Why were we not contacted by the council much earlier, given that many of us enrolled a long time in advance?”
Jo Grady, the University and College Union general secretary, has said: “Any business case that proposes outsourcing, which is underpinned with public money, needs proper scrutiny.
‘Proper scrutiny’: UCU gen sec Jo Grady
“The highly skilled staff at CALAT provide a vital service to a large and under-represented group of learners, yet feel decisions are being made without proper consultation.“
And – to the surprise of absolutely no one at all – the council-commissioned “rapid review”, conducted by agency Mime came to exactly the conclusion that matched with Tory Perry’s plans to break-up CALAT.
“It is not feasible to continue with the current operating model,” said Mime’s report.
But CALAT insiders have given Mime’s piece of homework a grade “F”.
“It’s full of errors,” the educator told Inside Croydon.
Mime’s report “includes many inconsistencies”, they say.
“The report was meant to be independent, but it was actually intended to force CALAT to be outsourced.”
In 2021, with the council on its uppers but a year before part-time Perry took over as Mayor, CALAT was financially viable and paid for itself.
As well as public grants from the GLA, the Education and Skills Funding Agency and Department for Education (there continues to be a big push to get 18-to-25-year-olds better qualified) CALAT charges fees for its courses: typically around £300 for a five-week course in AI, up to £1,725 for “premium certifications” and professional qualifications in areas such as accountancy.
“It is the council in Croydon that has financially crippled CALAT and forced it from its classrooms in Clocktower by increasing the rent,” the insider said.
“That is where all the money went, not staff wages.”
Under threat: CALAT lecturers could lose their work if the service goes online
And they added: “It isn’t possible for an outsourced model to deliver a better service, because they will have even less money from the funding bodies, with the council taking a management fee for doing nothing!
“Then what’s left is meant to pay for specialist providers? Providers who are somehow cheaper than the current staff?
“It’s inevitable that the offer will be reduced, the amount of courses will be reduced and, most importantly, the quality of the provision will be dramatically reduced.”
There are also serious concerns about the unsettling move to Strand House. A council-owned building, tonight’s cabinet meeting is expected to nod through the property’s sale, with the site likely to be converted into flats.
The CALAT insider says that, in any case, Strand House is inadequate for CALAT’s purposes, as a replacement for their long-term home in the Clocktower. “It is not big enough to take on all the courses currently delivered at the Clocktower.
“And it isn’t a simple relocation as claimed by the Croydon Mayor. It has severely disadvantaged many students living in south and central Croydon.”
CALAT supporters have raised at least two petitions to oppose the outsourcing and job cuts – though only one of these petitions is on the council website and therefore liable to be “approved” by Croydon Council for presenting at a future Town Hall meeting, where Perry will be forced to respond.
“Any attempt to cut, decrease or diminish the services is an act of vandalism which will only harm the people of this town,” the petitioner says.
That petition can be found by clicking here
Read more: MP and union join calls to save CALAT from Perry’s cutbacks
Read more: After closing libraries, now Philistine Perry takes axe to CALAT
Read more: Perry admits he has no idea when work will start on Purley Pool
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I agree with everything you have written about the desire to close CALAT. Perry et al want to close CALAT and potentially outsource it. So, no more education for late learners, new learners, supporting people with difficulties or living on their own…… The class I attended, which was always oversubscribed, has been moved to a time and site that is not working for everyone….but where was the consultation or acknowledgement that we, as paying participants, count? We didn’t hear about it until it was a ‘fait accompli’. We are, after all, your clients, but Perry and co don’t care. There is no sense of a society here and no reason to vote for them at all, as they don’t consult with us at all. How easily has Perry been able to dismantle the social structures around Croydon. A Perry-shaped Croydon is a dead Croydon – bleak Town centre, closed venues, a potential AI data centre in the Whitgift Centre, no support for any social ventures…. I am sorry that I voted to have a Mayor in Croydon hoping for some ‘independent overivew’ after the entanglement of Labour Housing and Planning, but I didn’t realise it would be more of the same self-serving process. I am pleased to hear, however, that the now vacated Clocktower offices might be populated with consultants. Come on, Inside Croydon, find out how many consultants there are, what they are ‘doing’ and what they are paid.
Vandalism of Croydon’s Further Education.