No sense of urgency: Mayor Jason Perry (third from left) could not even manage to run Wednesday’s meeting to finish before 8pm
TOWN HALL SKETCH: Jason Perry missed the kick-off of the big match in Leipzig, and managed to deliver his annual ‘state of the borough’ speech without a single mention of the cash-strapped council’s finances.
By WALTER CRONXITE, Political Editor
Jason Perry can’t manage.
He can’t manage his own diary. If he could, Croydon’s failed Mayor would have been at the Red Bull Arena in Leipzig on Wednesday night, and not at Croydon Town Hall, where the council’s annual meeting went ahead because Perry had failed to foresee the likely “fixture clash”, and had failed to use the powers available to him to get a council date switch, when he had the opportunity.
Perhaps he didn’t think Palace would make it to the final of the UEFA Conference League? Perhaps he didn’t think he would win the May 7 mayoral election? That match was certainly a good deal closer than Palace’s encounter with Rayo Vallecano, and the Eagles only won 1-0.
Perry can’t even manage his meetings.
Come the event in the Town Hall Chamber, with the 8pm kick-off time in Leipzig creeping closer by the second, and with barely any real council business to be conducted, the self-congratulatory speeches went on, and on, and on…
Rubbish councillor: having failed as a cabinet member, Tory Scott Roche has been handed a non-job with a £20,000 allowance
And Perry’s own speech managed to go over its time limit and so ensured that all those who bothered to turn up for this turgid example of the self-serving council would miss seeing the kick-off of the big match going on in Germany that evening.
Those 70 councillors who got elected earlier this month are expected to show up at just six full meetings of the council in a year. This one, the annual meeting, does nothing for the people of Croydon and is entirely self-regarding, as Perry and the Labour opposition group dole out jobs – and special responsibility allowances – to one another and pat themselves on the back for doing so.
The local Fire Brigade chief was there, a Croydon top cop was present, even the Bishop of Croydon was there. The King’s representative in Croydon was present and correct.
But Adam Kellett, the newly elected councillor for New Addington South, from Nigel Farage’s limited company of grifters, didn’t bother to show up, despite being paid £1,000 per month out of Council Tax-payers’ money to do so. As an ex-Tory, as so many Reform Ltd councillors are, perhaps Kellett was wise to the fact that the council annual meeting is a thorough-going waste of time.
Absent: Reform Ltd’s Adam Kellett missed his first council meeting
Croydon’s MPs – we have four of them – also gave the event a wide berth. There were better things to watch on Wednesday night.
It all started at 6.30pm. And with so little real business on the agenda, it might have all been wrapped up in under 15 minutes.
But no. There was some smug self-congratulation to be done. A lot of smug self-congratulations, as it turned out.
First we had a speech from the civic Mayor.
Perry’s Croydon may be so broke it can’t afford 50 grand for six lollipop patrols to keep our kids safe (a Scott Roche decision), but they manage to find more than £200,000 a year to pay wages and special allowances to two mayors and three deputy mayors.
The civic Mayor thanked everyone for a lovely year he has just had on £28,000 of public money for cutting a few ceremonial ribbons and handing out a few certificates at school prize days, and wearing a silly hat at all times. Richard Chatterjee even listed many of the ribbons he’d cut and certificates he had dispensed while wearing the said silly hat.
Then Mohammed Islam, a Labour councillor who had shadowed Conservative Chatterjee as the deputy ceremonial mayor for the past 12 months – and for which he was paid £20,133 – gave a rambling account of what lovely people Chatterjee and his missus, the mayoral consort, are, and what a wonderful job they had done, cutting ribbons and handing out certificates.
Perry, as the leader of the Conservatives at the Town Hall, and Councillor Stuart King, Labour’s leader of the opposition, in turn gave their own little speeches, saying what a wonderful job Chatterjee had done wearing a silly hat for 12 months, and how wonderful Islam would be wearing the scarlet robes and ermine for the next 12 months, well deserving of all the extra allowances he would receive.
Officially approved: Jason Perry and his new cabinet, all of them on £41, 460 per year for the purpose of saying ‘How high?’ whenever the Mayor says, ‘Jump!’
There was a pause, while some certificates were handed out. Mrs Chatterjee got a large bunch of flowers, paid for by the cash-strapped council. Then all the people in the funny red gowns and silly hats trooped out of the Town Hall Chamber, following a geezer carrying a big golden-looking stick.
There was an announcement that, while the people in silly hats and funny costumes got changed, the meeting would be suspended. Didn’t anyone know there was a football match to be watched?
Chatterjee removing the silly hat he had worn since May 2025 and Islam apparently swapping one chain of office for another, took them 12 minutes. Kick-off was getting closer by the second.
Perhaps the long pause was caused by Councillor Scott Roche getting all dressed up, because now one of Croydon’s laziest and most useless of councillors is to be rewarded with more than £20,000 in allowances over the next year as the deputy civic mayor, possibly the non-job of all council non-jobs. So even Roche shouldn’t be able to fuck up this one.
The various people wearing red robes now swore some kind of oath, a bit like they do in the Cub Scouts, but without the same sincerity.
Civic pride: Cllr Mohammed Islam as ceremonial mayor gets to chair just five meetings of full council
And when they handed the council microphone to Roche, he broke it.
That took about five minutes. Then they did some further presentation, handing out badges. Like they do in the Cub Scouts, though there the badges have to be earned.
Once that was done, the council photographer – also someone being paid for out of your Council Tax – stepped in to take some “official” pictures.
Said snapper appeared to be one of those annoying ones you get at weddings, always seeking the perfect shot. He was to be disappointed.
His second speech sounded very much like his first. Richard Chattrerjee could cut a mean ribbon. Islam was a driving instructor, and he had lived in Croydon for a long time. All that sort of guff, that we’d already heard, at least twice.
Roche was given his chance. But it was 7.40pm by now. Kick-off in Leipzig was just 20minutes away. No one was listening. No one wanted to know. Besides, Roche, as a councillor, cabinet member and now as deputy civic mayor, has a stultifying style of speech-making, mumbling every word. There was nothing worth listening to.
One hour and 10 minutes spent on a grown-ups fancy dress parade.
7.42pm: The real council business of the night was finally addressed: the appointment of Conrad Hall as the council’s new, £200,000-plus director of finance. Perry read a motion, everyone agreed. All done in about one minute. This was more like it…
7.43pm: council committee structure for 2026 to 2027. There are pages of this stuff, ranging from cabinet positions (shame that the council can’t manage to spell Councillor Alasdair Stewart’s name correctly) to the Mitcham Common Conservators, to the Mortar Platoon, B Company, 4th Battalion The Parachute Regiment (Lynne Hale, Perry’s deputy mayor, has been given this onerous duty for some reason).
This, too, was passed with the kind of alacrity that you’d want with the Palace players in the tunnel in Leipzig.
Council clanger: Croydon can’t decide on how to spell Cllr Stewart’s first name, even for official documents
So it was 7.43pm when Mayor Jason Perry raised himself up on his hind legs to give his annual, set-piece “state of the borough speech”.
He was supposed to speak for no more than 10 minutes. Perry went on with his self-congratulatory twaddle for more than 12 minutes, claiming that his 1,000-vote winning margin was some kind of mandate, and claiming credit for Palace’s FA Cup win under his mayoralty.
Perry read some stats from the Met Police about how they had been reducing crime. The Met comes under a different Mayor, London’s, but Perry will claim credit for anyone’s successes, since he had so few of his own to boast about. Having, together with lazy councillor Roche, turned Croydon into the “fly-tipping capital of England”, Perry now claimed that enforcement against the scourge was “increasing”. Well, it could hardly have got any worse, now could it?
Croydon is, of course, in special measures, its finances overseen by government-appointed Commissioners, here to try to reduce the council’s £1.7billion debt in a borough where Perry increased Council Tax by 33% since 2023. No one at the council has seen any of the official council monthly spending figures since March.
And yet, in the 720seconds that Perry was spewing forth his self-congratulatory tosh, he did not mention the council’s finances once. Quite the oversight or, more likely, a real admission that Perry’s first four-year term had been an unmitigated failure.
Perry sat down.
It was by now 7.54pm. There was no way that Perry, the lifelong Eagles supporter, nor any of the hundred or so people trapped inside the Town Hall Chamber all with better things to do with their time, were going to make it to a pub with a big screen by kick-off in Leipzig.
Making a meal of it: has Jason Perry bitten off more than he can chew with a second term as Mayor?
And there was still another speech to be made. Councillor King, leader of the council’s biggest opposition group, got his turn. This could go on for ages yet – there are now five political parties, plus an independent, on the council. Would the Green leader, Ria Patel, get to say a few words, too? Or the LibDems? Or the Reform Ltd councillor who did bother to turn up?
Mercifully, that was not to be the case. But we still had to put up with Croydon’s version of the King’s speech. He paid tribute to the efforts of Rowenna Davis, Labour’s losing mayoral candidate, and he congratulated Perry on his victory.
And, whatever the time, King was going to deliver his speech, not least because it included a well-worked gag.
“Life as a councillor in Croydon is not easy,” King said.
“Some of you have already been exposed to unfavourable, unfair, unreasonable criticism…,” was he about to launch the latest Labour attack on Inside Croydon’s independent journalism? “… including in one case the suggestion that the councillor is here because they are related to a prominent politician.
“I reject that outright. I am confident that councillor is here because despite their youth they already bring a unique experience to this council that we can all benefit from.”
King continued: “So, Councillor Barwell…”, oh, how we all laughed, “I wish you well as you embark on your service as a Croydon councillor.”
King continued with his speech, pay tribute here and there, but with none of the usual rough and tumble of political debate across the Chamber.
He concluded with a warning, “We will not hesitate to use our voices – and our votes – at every occasion necessary,” said the man who in the year when Tory Perry wanted to hike Council Tax by 15% whipped his councillors to abstain, so that Perry’s council budget could pass.
But Mayor Jason Perry had not managed to get this most vacuous of meetings finished in time. Piss-poor Perry couldn’t even manage that.
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