Blocked: Mayor Jason Perry’s business plan is in tatters after Wednesday’s council meeting
CROYDON IN CRISIS: ‘Zero plan and zero competence’ – Croydon Mayor has his proposed business plan blocked at the Town Hall this week in an embarrassing reverse for the Tories and the council’s interim CEO.
WALTER CRONXITE, Political Editor, reports
Croydon’s failed Mayor, Jason Perry, now can’t even get his own business plan passed at council.
In the week when Labour officials across the country were warned by party HQ not to work with the Greens, Croydon Labour voted with the Greens, and the LibDems and even the grifters of Reform Ltd to block piss-poor Perry’s piss-poor plan.
With absentees on both sides of the Town Hall Chamber, for what was the first meeting of full council in more than three months, when Perry’s business plan for 2026 to 2030 was put to the vote, 39 councillors opposed it with just 27 true blue Tories voting in favour.
The only good thing opposition councillors could find to say about the glossy, 24-page virtual document was that it had been nicely designed.
The business plan is supposed to be part of the council’s policy framework, and is closely connected to the Mayor’s 2027-2028 Budget, where Perry again intends to increase Council Tax by the maximum allowed without need of a public referendum, while making cuts across a range of services.
Perry was allowed to make a long-winded speech, in which he repeated most, if not all, of his election promises, while making familiar jibes at the Labour government and Mayor of London. It appears that he believes that, in a borough of more than 400,000 people, winning an election by little more than 1,000 votes has given him some kind of mandate, what he called an “endorsement from residents”.
“Judge us on what we achieve,” Perry said.
Trouble is, Perry had presented to the council a business plan that had not a single KPI – key performance indicators – which rendered it useless for measuring the council’s, and the Mayor’s performance.
In Perry’s first business plan four years ago, there had been 92 KPIs.
The Noes have it: Perry was given a clear message on Wednesday night from four opposition parties
The absence of any targets or deadlines from Perry’s 2026 plan was “by design”, according to Labour group leader Stuart King, who delivered a devastating takedown of the incompetent Mayor.
“It is clear the Mayor believes no targets and no timelines means no risk of accountability when he fails,” Councillor King said, adding that the business plan represented “not so much a moving of the goalposts, but no goalposts at all.
“Under Mayor Perry,” King went on, “the only things rising are complaints and Council Tax. Croydon deserves better.”
Amy Foster, the Labour councillor who chairs the scrutiny committee, had already gone through Perry’s business plan last month. “The Mayor says the plan is about ‘raising standards, accelerating regeneration and ensuring residents see tangible improvements in their everyday lives’,” Foster said. She and the committee, Foster said, “Welcomed the focus on residents. Scrutiny wants this plan to succeed.”
Foster highlighted the dichotomy between the data handled by the bureaucrats working in Fisher’s Folly, and real life out on Croydon’s streets. For councillors, “performance data is vital as otherwise we are reliant on our casework data. And it can feel that the two tell different stories.”
The council’s North Koreanesque claim of a 98% clean-up rate of fly-tips within 48 hours of being reported sprang to mind. Eighteen months after rubbish contractors Veolia were re-appointed on a juicy new deal, Perry’s council has still failed to publish that contract as they promised.
Scrutiny: Cllr Amy Foster
According to Foster, Mayor Perry excised any data from his report “to make the plan easier for residents to understand”. Imagine: an entire borough being patronised by piss-poor Perry.
“When the committee looked at the plan, we could not see how priorities will be delivered, monitored and evaluated.”
And it is not just Labour, or the Greens, or the Liberal Democrats or even Reform Ltd that have smelt a rat over Perry’s patronising plan. The government Commissioners are not happy with it, either.
Foster said: “A key recommendation our committee made was for the governance, performance management and delivery arrangements that will support this plan to be made clearer to the committee, and members more widely.
“I note the Commissioners are asking for the same thing from the other direction.”
Others during the debate put the boot in on Perry’s plan. The document “looked pretty rather than professional” according to Foster’s predecessor as scrutiny chair, Leila Ben-Hassel, now King’s deputy leader.
“All smoke and mirrors,” she added.
Newbie councillor Tom Bowell echoed that theme, congratulating the graphic designer. But the document had “zero plan, zero competence”, Bowell said.
Keen on KPIs: Cllr Stuart King
Perry grumbled something about how he’d won the election and complained that the four opposition groups were ganging up on him. “You should have won more council seats then,” King snapped back.
Perry was puce in the face when the final scores of the electronic vote were shown on the digital display screens around the Chamber. “He looked on the ropes,” one Katharine Street source observed.
Apart from a couple of Council Tax votes, where the Labour opposition eventually evaporated into mass abstentions, this is the first time that a Mayoral proposal has been defeated at Croydon Council since Perry was elected in 2022.
The defeat is, according to a Labour source, “An impasse.”
They said: “We can’t amend, but we can block. He can stop amendments, but he can’t pass it.”
The defeat also represents a bit of a punch on the nose for Croydon’s £1,500 per day interim chief exec Mike Jackson, who was attending his first meeting of Croydon full council. The report recommending Perry’s patronising plan had come from Jackson’s desk.
Just as he had when he was reprimanded by a High Court judge over his unlawful LTNs earlier this year, Perry’s gone into a bit of a sulk. In his weekly message to the borough’s residents, he failed to mention that his important business plan, deliberately devoid of detail, had been defeated.
Full council meetings, patronising Perry patronised, “are an important part of our local democracy, giving councillors from all parties the chance to debate key issues”. Unlike the cabinet meetings chaired by Perry, where he only reluctantly allows opposition councillors to get a word in.
Perry claimed, “I welcomed the frank and constructive discussion that took place.”
We will be able to judge quite how “welcome” that discussion was when Perry brings his business plan back to full council, possibly at its next meeting, which is not until December.
- Click here to admire a wonderful example of graphic design, and see the full vacuousness of Perry’s business plan
- Click here for the council report recommending adoption of Perry’s business plan
Read more: Perry looks to inflict pain for his failures on Croydon’s poor
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Read more: ‘Challenge remains enormous’ as Perry hikes Council Tax again
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