Croydon (Parliament Politics Magazine) – A senior Tory councillor has broken Croydon’s silence, calling the government-appointed ‘improvement panel’ a failure, in rare criticism from within the party.
One of the most knowledgeable and experienced of Croydon‘s 70 council members, Robert Ward, broke the code of silence at Town Hall today regarding the events that finally resulted in the appointment of Commissioners this week to take over the management of the financially constrained council.
In the initial months of the council’s financial collapse being acknowledged, a Conservative Secretary of State established the improvement and assurance panel, known in councilspeak as “the IAP,” in Croydon in 2021.
The present Labour administration stepped in and arranged for additional assistance in the shape of Commissioners when the improvement panel’s tour of duty in Croydon was scheduled to conclude next week. This was due to the panel’s final report, which was delivered in April, and an additional £136 million in exceptional financial support.
“The IAP clearly failed”,
wrote Ward, the Conservative councillor for Selsdon and Addington Village.
“Croydon is paying the price.”
Jim McMahon, the minister of local government, confirmed what everyone had been expecting when he gave another statement to the House of Commons on Thursday. He also appointed four Commissioners for a two-year term. No one in Whitehall has been able to explain how this may be more successful than a panel of six other local government “experts” that has been in existence for five years.
Commissioners have been chosen to prolong the government’s intervention until July 20, 2027, as the appointment of the improvement and assurance panel is set to expire in a few days.
The reform panel stated in its final report that spending at the council under Mayor Perry and CEO Katherine Kerswell was “runaway,” and Croydon had £1.4 billion in debt, which is generally considered to be an “unsustainable” situation.
When that study was released to the public last month, Perry was unable to control his anger. His irate outburst at McMahon and the Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government, however, had little effect on their decision.
Kerswell’s extensive, line-by-line criticism of the improvement panel’s findings didn’t either.
However, Perry, Kerswell, and other prominent Tory council members refrained from openly denouncing and criticizing Tony McArdle, the chair of the improvement panel, and his colleagues for their role in Croydon’s predicament.
Ward wrote:
“Change is hard. The bigger the change, the longer it takes, and the tougher the choices.”
Ward served as the deputy cabinet member for contract management under Mayor Perry. Ward must have been heavily involved in the decision to award the £40 million, eight-year contract to the garbage contractors Violia, less than two years after Veolia was fired for subpar work. Change is difficult, as they say.
Ward, who was first elected to the council in 2018, claims that Croydon “was a dysfunctional organisation” when he took office, during “peak Negrini” and with Labour’s Tony Newman leading the council.
Ward writes,
“There was poor cost control and poor leadership across the council.” So nothing much has changed in seven years then.
After four years as opposition lead on scrutiny, I knew things were bad. When Mayor Perry insisted on the opening the book’s exercise (of course criticised by the Labour opposition) even more was revealed. I would not have believed some of the shortcomings that came to light if I had not seen them myself.
Since then, there has been considerable progress, but much is left to do. Change of this magnitude takes years, certainly more than three from where we were in 2022, double that at absolute best.
The appointment of an improvement and assurance panel was unsurprising. Debt was far greater than the assets the council owned. Coupled with continuing, unavoidable adverse current account balance (spending greater than income) meant that burden could only get worse. The solution had to be a debt write-off of some kind. For the government to do this, they needed reassurance Croydon had done all it could to fix the problem…”.
Even Ward can’t escape the Punch and Judy politics that are so frequently seen in the Town Hall Chamber, despite his sensible, commonsense approach to issues.
“Generally supportive, never once using its directive powers,”
says Ward of the improvement panel. There were no positive suggestions from the Labour opposition. Ward neglects to point out how infrequently any of the opposition parties’ presentations to the council have been permitted by Mayor Perry.
When Ward read the final report from the improvement group, he claimed it was “something of a shock.” Maybe Ward was sleeping at the rear of the Town Hall Chamber when the council’s enormous overspending for 2024–2025 was finally brought up. Or did the £136 million bailout proposal get through? Or the time the council’s own finance director called the budget for 2025–2026 “unsustainable”?
Ward writes:
“The final IAP report is crucial. The expensive IAP whose costs are borne by the council, had no concrete suggestions on what might be done differently. That the council should go ‘further and faster’ ranks with my favourite platitude ‘work smarter not harder’, deployed when you have no idea what to do.
The IAP clearly failed. The Labour government saw a political opportunity. Croydon is paying the price.”
When Lead Commissioner Ged Curran gets to Fisher’s Folly this week, he could do worse than listen to Councillor Ward for an hour.
What specific failures are being attributed to the government-appointed improvement panel?
Despite five years of the IAP’s oversight since its appointment in 2021 following Croydon’s admitted financial collapse, the council remains in a deeply “unsustainable” financial position with debts of around £1.4 billion.
The panel’s final report in April 2025 and the council’s continued difficulties prompted further government intervention via appointed Commissioners to take over running the council.
Senior Conservative councillor Robert Ward stated bluntly that the IAP had “clearly failed” because Croydon is still paying the price for the financial mismanagement that led to the crisis.
While the IAP set out plans and supported some improvements in management, governance, and service delivery, critics argue the panel has been unable to deliver sufficient change at the required pace or scale, particularly in tackling the huge debt burden and financial sustainability.