Croydon (Parliament Politics Magazine) – Croydon Council leader Jason Perry faces criticism after failing to publish any council spending figures since May, raising transparency concerns.
After spending the most of the week on a personal reelection mission at the Conservative Party annual conference in Manchester, where Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor, asserted that the Tories “are the party of fiscal responsibility,” Jason Perry, the unsuccessful mayor, has returned to Croydon.
Poor Perry will not soon be cited by Stride as a model of budgetary responsibility.
Croydon’s annual salary of £84,000. Without any published information about his council’s expenditures since May, over six months ago, the mayor walked off to the Tory conference.
One of Stride’s former colleagues, Michael Gove, had appointed a group of local government specialists to Croydon, where Perry presided over a council that last year labeled expenditure as “runaway.”
Additionally, each year since taking over at Croydon Town Hall, Perry has required government bailouts; earlier this year, he received a record £136 million in emergency funding.
The government-appointed Commissioners who arrived at Fisher’s Folly in July are overseeing Croydon’s failed mayor during what appears to be the last months of his term in office.
However, the data available at Perry’s council cabinet meeting at the end of September only extended to May due to careless accounting and the delayed delivery of council financial reports. Nothing was available for the months of June, July, or August.
When Perry was busy trying to incite anti-ULEZ sentiment before the London elections and then campaigning for Chris Philp in Croydon South for the General Election in the spring and summer of 2024, he lost sight of the situation and let council spending go “runaway.”
Perry presided over a Town Hall cabinet meeting that attempted to paint a positive picture of the council’s financial situation before departing on his brief self-promotional tour to the northwest.
Although he attempted to argue that his budget was on course to underspend by £16.5 million, he was nevertheless obliged to acknowledge the “nonsustainability” of the council’s income budget.
Yet the finance report to cabinet also noted “that service directorates are asked to reduce their net expenditure so that the annual budget can be balanced with reduced use of capitalisation directions”.
And,
“It should not be underestimated what a challenge this will be against the background of increased demand pressures which are continuing to build across local government as well as increased market prices.”
Which was the excuse given by Perry for his “runaway” spending in 2024, too.
As expected, opposition council members suspect Perry and his council top executive, Katherine Kerswell, of withholding crucial financial information.
The only publicly available information on the council’s budget was four months old, which worried Stuart King, the head of the Labour group in Town Hall.
King informed the assembly that the council members “could only take a cautious and qualified degree of confidence” in the information being presented. He doesn’t believe a word Kerswell and her finance officials say, which is nice council jargon.
King pointed out that the council has already projected spending £37 million more on housing and social care services than it will in 2024–2025.
And then there’s Kerswell and Perry’s “Stabilisation Plan”, which few Town Hall figures have any belief that it will work.
“Published in April, approved in June, but in September the business plans for the savings in it were still not finalised,”
King said.
How has oversight by the government panel responded to this gap?
The panel will continue to receive financial reports and request more frequent detailed updates on council spending to fill in the gaps in available public information.
It is now necessary for the council to demonstrate best practice accountability frameworks and clearly categorize expenditure such as agency staffing expenditure.
In addition, there will be more regular audits and reviews to ensure spending is aligned with the Stabilisation Plan and Future Croydon Transformation Plan for sustainable financial recovery.
The panel has outlined clear milestones for the council to demonstrate improvements in both governance and transparency, connecting these to ongoing support from the government. The panel highlights all areas of financial risk and challenges the council on communicating with residents and stakeholders through public reports and formal meetings.