CROYDON IN CRISIS: Saddled with £1.4bn of ‘toxic’ debt, Mayor Perry has been rendered paralysed in his management of the cash-strapped council’s finances. Ahead of tonight’s budget meeting, ANDREW PELLING outlines some of the options for the borough’s politicians
Betrayed: workers, residents associations and trades unions all say they were badly let down by Croydon Labour last year
There’s another protest expected outside the Town Hall tonight as Croydon’s Conservative Mayor, Jason Perry, proposes increasing Council Tax by almost 21% since his election in 2022. During that election campaign two years ago, Perry promised “to fix the finances”, but this latest tax hike is not the answer to the council’s problems.
And Perry and his right-hand man, Jason Cummings, know that. As does Jane West, the council’s director of finance. As does Tony McArdle, the £1,000 per day government-appointed chair of the “improvement” panel.
Another Council Tax increase is not the fix to Croydon’s finances that Perry was promising the voters during the 2022 election.
The reality is that Croydon’s £1.4billion debt burden is unsustainable now that interest rates are relatively high. Selling the council’s assets will cover day-to-day spending for a while, but in the end, as Mayor Perry admitted at his Sanderstead Mayor’s Question Time last night, the figures just don’t add up.
So the residents of Croydon will face even more cuts, year after year, and even higher debts, and ever more interest to be paid. Continue reading
Labour Party members have been placed on stand-by for some kind of resolution over the stalled selection of their parliamentary candidate in Croydon East.
“Commercial reasons” has been given by the burgers ‘n shakes multi-national for their U-turn, although one local figure suggested a more realistic explanation: “Perhaps they saw the opposition on local social media groups and decided it was all too much trouble?”
In this week’s column, ANDREW FISHER, pictured right, looks at the criminalisation of journalism through the treatment of Julian Assange, and he charts the latest undermining of local councils by central Government
