Croydon (Parliament Politics Magazine) – Croydon Council advertises four director positions, signaling the end of Kerswell’s costly interim leadership and a move toward permanent management appointments.
Given that someone at Fisher’s Folly posted advertisements for four senior positions with yearly wages of up to £135,000 apiece, it is undoubtedly looking that way.
Some are for important council positions that were left unfilled about six months ago by the last occupant. All of them are marketed as full-time, employed roles that will take the place of temporary workers that the municipality has already employed.
Interestingly, the ads surfaced just a few days after Commissioners appointed by the government took over the management of Kerswell’s omnishambles council.
According to an Inside Croydon investigation, the council spent at least £30 million more than it had budgeted for the previous fiscal year. This included steepling amounts on agency staff, like the £726 per hour hire of one “interim” consultant.
“That’s ‘exciting’ in the same way that boarding a roller-coaster ride with no brakes is ‘exciting’,”
according to one staffer at Fisher’s Folly who has endured five years on the Kerswell fairground ride.
The job ad blurb continues:
“Under our current political and officer leadership, a huge amount has been achieved as we move towards a more sustainable and prosperous future for our residents and businesses.”
Given that they discuss “the delivery of 1,400 new homes in the town centre,” the person who created this advertisement also seems to be a little out of touch. The desire of Westfield alone to construct 3,000 apartments has long been known to the public. Or have the developers had another change of heart?
According to the other job advertisements, candidates must be ready to provide extra qualities like “championing our new target operating model, the core of which is digital first.”
This comes from a local government that is being sued in the High Court for denying the public access to statutory services after its phone lines went down for at least five days in the last week.
Unlike their previous interims, who would have been assigned the work by CEO Kerswell using delegated authority, anyone hired for these four roles should anticipate that their nomination will be approved by the cross-party committee of elected council members.
For nearly two years, Huw Rhys Lewis BSc, BArch, MSc, MRIBA, MAPM, MRICS had been Croydon’s interim director of commercial investment and capital until last month, when he left Fisher’s Folly in a somewhat impolite haste before the Commissioners arrived.
“Huw is no longer with London Borough of Croydon… due to a snap decision to save costs engaging with interim personnel,”
according to an internal staff email that Inside Croydon was able to view.
Apparently “supporting the London Borough of Croydon to improve services, introduce and embed new ways of working, optimise IT systems to support service delivery, and driving a culture change programme to provide resident focused services,” Hanlon has been employed in the housing department since December 2023 as a self-described “leadership consultant.” Thus, someone who speaks Councilspeak well, which Kerswell and she find quite appealing.
According to the schematic of Kerswell’s corporate management team, Hanlon is a “director, housing assets and repairs.” By December, a full-time candidate for that position may be hired, preventing Hanlon from serving as an interim for longer than two years. She would then be eligible to continue in a permanent position while still receiving her temporary salary.
Instead of risking having His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs blame them for permitting interims to use small limited companies to hide what is actually an employer-employee arrangement that does not pay the full rate of National Insurance contributions, this clear-out of interims is expected to significantly lower the council’s expenses while also neatly formalizing arrangements for key staff.
Katherine Kerswell, the CEO, was on vacation and could not be reached for comment. In any case, Croydon Council’s phones are broken, so we were unable to reach them.
How did Kerswell’s reliance on interims impact Croydon’s management style?
Relying on high-cost temporary directors created a climate of instability and frequent leadership changes. Without stable, long-term appointees, the council struggled to establish consistent management practices, policies, and oversight.
Interim managers, often brought in on short notice and for limited periods, were sometimes less embedded in the organization and less accountable for long-term outcomes. This sometimes resulted in decisions focused on immediate crisis management rather than sustainable governance and reform.
The use of expensive interim directors consumed council resources, leading to public criticism and reducing funds available for essential services.