Following confirmation that Croydon Council employees have been prevented from reading Inside Croydon, the executives who occupy the upper floors of Fisher’s Folly are becoming increasingly paranoid and have a siege mentality.
Even elected council members have discovered that they are prohibited from contacting this website using their Croydon Council email addresses, in a remarkable anti-democratic assault on their right to free speech.
Jason Perry, the elected Tory Mayor of the crisis-plagued council, recently gave himself and the 70 council members in the borough a pay hike. He also approved a large increase in senior staff salaries, which will cover hundreds of thousands of pounds in additional expenses.
For instance, it has been determined that Katherine Kerswell’s attractive £192,000 annual salary, which includes pension payments, exes, and the pleasant small income of her fees as an election returning officer, is insufficient. Kerswell received a pay increase of £12,000 a year, making her £204,000 annually.
It’s still unclear what the other top earners on the council make.
For the second consecutive year, Croydon has been left off of the Tax Payers’ Alliance’s annual Town Hall Rich List for 2025. All because Croydon has once again failed to file its accounts under Kerswell.
This should be a major issue, as Croydon still has £1.4 billion in debt and is expected to spend £100 million more this fiscal year than it did last year, even after Perry promised to “fix the finances.” Residents who have been affected by 27% increases in council taxes since 2023 under Mayor Perry are expected to pay for all of this as well as Kerswell’s wage hikes.
In the meantime, the council is getting more away from the people it is meant to represent.
Recently, Kerswell’s council spent £5 million to purchase 4,000 brand-new laptops for the remaining 3,000 employees in Croydon.
However, staff members in the council’s offices have observed that their browsers prevent them from visiting Inside Croydon, which some have stated is their sole source of knowledge about the true situation at Town Hall.
“This site has been blocked in accordance with the Croydon Council Acceptable Use Policy,” an official notice scalds staffers who dare click through to iC, “as it may be inappropriate for business use.”
“But we can still access quality news sites like The S*n, so it’s not all bad news,” one of Kerswell’s disheartened employees remarked.
According to a quick assessment of staff members’ browser access to other areas of the internet, there are no limitations on websites like YouTube or Reddit, which Kerswell and her closest colleagues believe are completely suitable for business use.
In response, staff members expressed “utter disbelief” that upper management would use council resources in such a Stalinist manner.
This high management decision has never been publicly aired at the council, as is becoming more and more common. A few elected council members were not aware that Inside Croydon was prohibited. That is, until they attempted to send an email to this website and discovered that it was also prohibited.
“A custom mail flow rule created by an admin… has blocked your message,” is the notification received by councillors using their council email accounts, confirming that this is not an accident or “glitch”, but a deliberate action taken by officials at Fisher’s Folly.
“Sending to inside.croydon@btinternet.com is blocked.”
But as with most things Kerswell and her lackeys try to do, their block on Inside Croydon is half-arsed and utterly ineffectual.
“We can still access your Facebook, Bluesky and Spotify,” one staffer advises. “I guess they would need to block all of it to block your pages.”
Kerswell has already attempted to silence employees due to the council’s appalling condition. Additionally, Kerswell has a lot of things that she and her executive directors don’t want council employees to know about or discuss after nearly five years in the CEO position.
Kerswell handled the £6.4 million expenditure on outside consultants last year in order to get their opinion on how to make additional cuts. Staff complaints and criticism were dismissed with a wave.
The closing of Access Croydon, which prevented the public from seeing a council employee without an appointment, was ordered by Kerswell shortly after Blocking Inside Croydon.
“The changes to Access Croydon are part of the council’s action to protect local services for residents,”
Kerswell wrote as she prepared to withdraw another council service.
When the system first launched, the public and employees experienced “chaos.”
Within two days of implementing the new system, tensions had risen to the point where security personnel were being harassed by their fellow council members, prompting Kerswell to issue a formal warning.
Kerswell was able to exclude homeless people from their council by blocking Access Croydon.
Those who come to the Central Library to look for emergency housing are now told to use one of their computers to schedule an appointment and to indicate that they are homeless.
The pathetic Perry and Kerswell have made the untrue assertion that the new approach is “in line with local authorities across London.” Only four other boroughs in London actually operate on an appointments-only basis.
One angry member of council staff said:
“It is all about delivering the new target operating model: a self-service, virtual council, where you get to talk to a half-baked AI.”
Additionally, Perry and Kerswell have devised a method to prevent the public from holding their dysfunctional council accountable through the limited democratic channels available to them.
More than 5,000 locals have signed petitions in the last month or so, one opposing the sale of Heathfield House, the council-owned listed house on Gravel Hill, and the other against the proposed closure of the Carers’ Centre on George Street.
In Kerswell’s Croydon, both petitions would often be given a Town Hall debate.
Because 2,000 of the 2,500 signatures on one e-petition were rejected by council officials, it was rejected. Kerswell’s council made the most pathetic excuses when they claimed that the other got lost in a council spam bin.
What are the main reasons behind the council’s decision to block Inside Croydon?
In spite of budget deficits and council tax increases, the council’s leadership, including Chief Executive Katherine Kerswell, seems to be attempting to protect elected officials and employees from critical reporting regarding the council’s financial difficulties, management choices, and scandals, such as the significant pay increases for senior staff.
Inside Croydon has covered a wide range of topics, including public discontent, service closures, costly consultant spending on cuts, and noncompliance with account filing requirements.
Access blocking is perceived as an effort to keep employees from seeing unfavorable articles that can incite public or internal dissension.
As part of a larger trend of limiting avenues of communication that hold the council accountable, elected council members are also prohibited from emailing the website.