CROYDON IN CRISIS: A year since the vacancy arose at Fisher’s Folly, the Mayor is no closer to recruiting someone for the top job to take over from Katherine Kerswell.
KEN LEE, Town Hall correspondent, reports
Jason Perry has failed again.
Despite dangling a £275,000 salary carrot, no one interviewed for the job of the council’s chief executive was reckoned to be good enough (“with the right experience and leadership”, according to Mayor Perry) to take on the job of running Croydon’s clusterfuck of a council.
It is a year since Katherine Kerswell flounced out of Fisher’s Folly, helped on her way with a £50,000 pay-off approved by Perry so she didn’t have to work her notice period.
And it is four months since the council placed ads in the trade press seeking a new “champion” for Croydon.
And still we are no further forward.
Today, Perry’s bankrupt borough is on its third CEO in just 12 months, with Mike Jackson being paid at least £1,500 per day as an interim. Initially hired for six months, following Perry’s announcement to last night’s meeting of full council, it looks as if Jackson could be in Croydon’s hot seat for a while longer. Kerr-ching!
This is all turning into another costly shambles under the Tory Mayor.
The failed recruitment process and interim-rate payments for temporary stand-ins all make for an expensive exercise – and all paid for, as usual, by Croydon’s long-suffering Council Tax-payers.
Hot seat: Mike Jackson, the £1,500 per day interim CEO, could be around for a while yet
Jackson, who started in Croydon in August after two years out of work, will be paid £360,000 by the cash-strapped council if he stays around for a full year. That’s almost £100,000 more than the CEO salary that was budgeted for.
The fees paid to executive headhunters GatenbySanderson to find the right person are reckoned to be in the region of at least £70,000. Croydon Council describes paying such amounts as “standard practice”.
Perry’s council could be looking at having to pay the same fees again for a second round of recruitment – with no guarantee that the agency will provide a better line-up this time round.
Perry’s council delayed seeking a replacement for Kerswell until this summer, having relied on her assistant chief exec, Elaine Jackson, to soldier on after her departure, her task softened by a salary hike to £220,000. Kerr-ching!
But Elaine Jackson (no relation to Mike) was forced to stand down for health reasons.
Mike Jackson arrived courtesy of the same GatenbySanderson recruitment agency, and another fat fee for the headhunters.Kerr-ching!
Eye test: Lord Gnome has been following Mike Jackson closely for 14 years
Details of his somewhat colourful career do not appear to have been shared with the appointments sub-committee before he was approved – an Inside Croydon story that has since been followed up by Private Eye, which has been reporting on Mike Jackson’s misadventures around the country since 2013.
In the headhunters’ recruitment pack for the permanent job, it said: “Croydon wants a chief executive who will be a visible champion for the borough… someone who will engage openly with residents, communities and businesses, earning trust through honesty, delivery and presence.”
Which would make a welcome change.
After the shortlisted candidates for the permanent CEO position had been interviewed earlier this month, none was reckoned to be up to the task. Last week, the appointments sub-committee – Perry and two Tory councillors, three Labour councillors and one Green – voted unanimously to reject the applicants.
This, in some ways, represents an improvement on previous CEO appointments. Kerswell, initially in post as an interim following the council’s financial collapse in 2020, wrote her own job description for the Croydon CEO, and by the time it came to the interviews, she was the only candidate. Kerr-ching!
Tech test: former CEO Jo Negrini
There were more candidates interviewed the previous time a vacancy had arisen, in 2016. One of them, Jo Negrini, is said to have failed the technical test given to all candidates. Yet Negrini still got the job, aided by a glowing reference from Labour MP Steve Reed. Kerr-ching!
Katharine Street sources have suggested that this year, at least one potentially outstanding candidate, with a track record of turning round struggling local authorities, was told not to bother applying because they had worked with too many Labour councils in the past.
It is known that this time round there were at least two candidates (so better than the Kerswell appointment) and that they all passed their tech test (better than Negrini).
But still, according to Perry, not quite up to it. So the council will have to go through the whole thing again, though when that might be, the Mayor failed to say last night.
Meanwhile, the costs keeping racking up.
Had Perry got on with the task of replacing Kerswell when she left in October 2025, the council would have faced a notional £70,000 agency fee, plus an annual salary for the successful recruit of, say, £275,000 within a 12-month period, plus six months of Elaine Jackson at £110,000. Total: £455,000.
Instead, in addition to the above, the council is now looking at having to pay Mike Jackson’s £360,000, the agency fee for his appointment (at least £50,000) and another round of recruitment fees for the permanent job.
So piss-poor Perry’s dither and delay has cost the council with debts it can’t afford to pay another half a million pounds. Kerr-ching!
Grasping on his notes very tightly and barely looking up at the assembled 60-odd councillors in the Town Hall Chamber last night, in his usual bumbling style, Perry read out a carefully prepared statement.
Bumbling: Perry announcing his latest failure at last night’s council meeting
“We recently undertook a competitive recruitment process…”, as opposed to an uncompetitive recruitment process?, “… to appoint a permanent chief executive.
“Following careful consideration, the appointments and disciplinary committee, which includes members from across political groups…”, which is Perry trying to pass the buck to others, “… decided not to make an appointment at this stage.
“Croydon is at a crucial point in its improvement journey and we need someone with the right experience and leadership to take the organisation forward.
“This is one of the most important appointments we will make and it is essential that we get it right.”
It would be nice if piss-poor Perry ever got anything right.
Read more: Exposed: New CEO’s role in Norfolk’s £30m incinerator scandal
Read more: £275,000: Loadsamoney Perry breaks the bank for new CEO
Read more: Commissioners: council lacks focus and robust delivery plans
Read more: Kerswell takes another pay-off as she quits as council’s CEO
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Very unfortunate. I’m not sure how attractive a job is as CEO of a multiple times “failed” Croydon Council. If nobody can do it properly why not just abolish the post and let people on a lower bracket make decisions? There are a lot of good people in the council with motivation more than how much money they can make. Perhaps one of them can step up to the plate in due course.
“because they had worked with too many Labour councils in the past.”
What an absolutely ridiculous reason for passing on a candidate