Croydon (Parliament Politics Magazine) – Croydon Council faces fresh turmoil as interim planning lead Adam resigns, intensifying leadership instability and stalling critical urban development projects.
After this website looked into it, a journeyman council director who was known for charging £1,000 a day and accepting huge payoffs resigned as Croydon’s head of planning.
After serving as Croydon‘s “interim director of planning and strategic planning” since the end of May, Adam Wilkinson, a journeyman civic official known as an “interim specialist,” resigned yesterday.
Wilkinson resigned in response to the Inside Croydon report, which stated that he was hired by Croydon Council roughly concurrently with the official dissolution of his private consulting firm due to His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs winding up the company for nonpayment of taxes, owing tens of thousands of pounds.
Wilkinson had only been employed by Croydon Council since the end of May, based on the council’s publicly available documents and Freedom of Information responses.
Council chief executive Katherine Kerswell had suggested his nomination to the financially challenged council’s appointments committee (at £204,000 a year), and Mayor Jason Perry had given his approval (at £84,000.
The council has grown more secretive, anti-democratic, and some even accuse it of being dishonest under Kerswell and Mayor Perry. Wilkinson’s sudden resignation has not been announced by Croydon Council, nor has it even notified elected council members and employees internally.
“Why am I not surprised that I found this out from Inside Croydon, about a very important council business that I should be told directly?”
one exasperated Katharine Street source said last night.
As previously reported by Inside Croydon, Wilkinson had a career filled with short-term, usually very lucrative positions in local government. He also pocketed over £500,000 in settlement payments and a few golden handshakes while bailing out of other council jobs.
Records reveal that, even for part-time positions, Wilkinson frequently received fees, transport and lodging costs, and VAT totaling almost £1,000 per day in his prior employers.
Official returns state that Wilkinson’s “role was undertaken… via an external company” at Southampton City Council, where he served as “executive director – place” from 2022 to early 2024.
He received £242,146 during the 12 months of 2022–2023. VAT excluded.
Then came the golden handshakes Wilkinson was fortunate enough to get along the road.
After only a year of employment, Wilkinson was paid £365,000 by Kent County Council in 2008.
In 2015, Derby City Council offered Wilkinson £140,000 as part of a voluntary redundancy deal.
His visit was never even announced by the council’s propaganda bunker. The short tenure of Wilkinson as head of Croydon Council’s infamously poorly run planning department, however, has left the council with even more problems.
Wilkinson was brought on as Heather Cheesbrough’s temporary replacement.
During her tenure as head of Croydon’s planning department, Cheesbrough, a Jo Negrini appointee, concealed the fact that one of her senior planners was married to the director of a nearby real estate developer and misrepresented her own qualifications—or lack thereof.
Cheesbrough departed Croydon in April, reportedly in search of a “career break,” after nearly ten years of employment in Fisher’s Folly.
A senior source on Katharine Street claims that although the council will have had at least three months’ notice of Cheesbrough’s departure, their efforts to find a permanent replacement have been hampered by the fact that the best candidates are already employed, frequently with notice periods of six months.
The insider added, “And you need leadership in the interim.”
There are major issues with the council’s HR department and their use of executive head hunters, as well as the apparent lack of due diligence on the background of the candidate they chose, if Wilkinson—who lacked the qualifications typically needed for a senior planning appointment—was the best candidate Kerswell and Perry could find.
The recent chaos surrounding council recruiting has caused a lull in local authority planning departments, particularly Croydon’s.
The current leader-less planning department is facing a hearing later this year on the Croydon Plan, in addition to the government and London Mayor proposing significant changes to the planning system, rolling back the Green Belt, and submitting the most recent Westfield planning application for Croydon town centre later this year.
Mayor Perry’s staunch Tory council members, who had defended the appointment of Interim Adam—possibly at £1,000 per day—by claiming that the council was “paying the appropriate market rates to attract candidates with experience we need,” will be embarrassed by Wilkinson’s hasty departure.
The issue was that Wilkinson also possessed the type of background that is often unacceptable for employees of a government agency.
By January 2025, matters came to a head with Leeds-based Lewis Business Recovery and Insolvency setting out to the High Court the grounds for compulsory liquidation of Adam Wilkinson Consultancy Ltd.
“The only asset of the company was an overdrawn director’s loan account in the sum of £27,850”.
Lewises wrote to Wilkinson asking for the money. He “advised that he was unable to repay the loan account due to his own personal financial circumstances”. Lewis’s liquidators effectively concluded it would not be cost-effective to get the money back, and so let Wilkinson off the hook.
On April 13 of this year, Adam Wilkinson Consultancy Ltd was formally dissolved. There is no formal list of directors who are disqualified that includes the name of its founder. “No ethical issues have come to light during the period reported on,” the liquidators stated.
There was nothing wrong with Wilkinson looking for other work. However, it is likely necessary to closely examine the decision-making process of Croydon Council, the company that employed him.
The appointments committee has only met twice since the end of January, with the most recent meeting taking place on May 27 to talk about “Senior staffing matters.”
Mayor Perry chaired the meeting.
The public and press were kept out of this democratic farce, and almost all of its business was conducted behind closed doors.
Based on the limited information that the council has grudgingly made public, it is hard to determine whether Adam Wilkinson was ever questioned about his business dealings during his interview for the Croydon role. Perhaps because he neglected to disclose the failure of his business and the unpaid tax, Wilkinson felt compelled to leave his position at Croydon after giving the Inside Croydon report some serious thought.
Last night, several loyalist council members were briefed on “recent progress” at Croydon’s planning department, despite Kerswell and Perry’s council’s recent failure.
“All political parties in Croydon want to see our town centre regenerated and our planning team working effectively,”
one council source told Inside Croydon.
“I look forward to the council appointing a permanent replacement to drive these priorities forward.”
They indicated that as they wait for a permanent candidate to become available, the council may need to look for a replacement temporary director.
Meanwhile, Croydon Council has yet to respond to Inside Croydon’s persistent inquiries concerning Wilkinson’s hiring and employment conditions.
However, after their most recent, expensive, and disastrous administration, Katherine Kerswell and Mayor Jason Perry have more questions to answer after their selected candidate resigned after just a few weeks in office.
Why did Croydon Council appoint Wilkinson despite his company’s insolvency?
Adam Wilkinson was recently hired as the temporary director of planning and strategic planning for Croydon Council, one of the most important and prominent positions on the council.
This decision was taken only a few weeks after Adam Wilkinson firm Ltd, Wilkinson’s private firm, was formally dissolved after HMRC issued a mandatory winding-up order because of outstanding tax obligations.
The appointments committee met in private to endorse the chief executive’s recommendation, and the majority of the actual decision-making process took place behind closed doors.
Regarding whether Wilkinson’s insolvency was brought up or taken into account during the hiring process, the council has declined to directly respond to inquiries. Requests for Freedom of Information have been made to find out whether and how Wilkinson’s business dealings were examined, but the council has not yet responded with any meaningful information.