We name the shyest councilors in Croydon – Inside Croydon

IT’S CAR REPAIR TIME

Now is the time for Inside Croydon to reveal those councilors who couldn’t give a toss, those who they did the least hold Mayor Perry, Executive Director Katherine Kerswell and their officials accountable or do case work for their residents.

Based on official statistics, we’ve uncovered some startling figures which suggest some of our elected officials are getting tens of thousands of pounds of your money to do… well, not very much

Lord Mayor Jason Perry and the Croydon Tories are about to give one of the less busy, arguably the laziest councilors in the Town Hall a big pat on the back and another eight grand of taxpayers’ money.

Richard Chatterjee has been a Croydon councilor for 22 years but is one of the least known of the borough’s 70 councillors.

That’s probably because it’s one of the lowest-working councillors, according to official figures obtained from Croydon Council through a Freedom of Information request.

They show that the adviser for Shirley North handled the grand total of inquiries from just 12 members in the whole of last year – only about one a month!

This, at least, is an improvement over the previous period when Chatterjee managed to field only two questions on behalf of Shirley residents.

However, the retired civil servant still had £20,277.60 in councilor special responsibility allowances last year – he has one of many City Hall “non-jobs”, as vice-chairman of the scrutiny committee.

Having mayor: Richard Chatterjee

And next Wednesday, at the pointless back-slapping event of the annual ‘mayorial engagement’, Chatterjee will wear the chain and robes of office as the district’s civic deputy mayor. Yes, we’re not just paying poor Perry £82,000 for not doing much, but we have a ceremonial mayor (for 2024 to 2025, that is Labour’s Kola Agboola, following his magnificent service to the borough in … (cheque notes) … three years as a counselor) and an MP, who both get an extra dose for doing very little.

In Chatterjee’s case, this version of Buggin’s row could see him receive slightly less money from the council than he was paid last year. But if all goes to plan, and Chatterjee becomes mayor in 12 months’ time, he can look forward to a very generous £27,592 for doing next to nothing while wearing a fancy dress.

All this, however, does not win Chatterjee, our 2024 Toss Machine, for the counsel who has done the least casework in the past year.

Councilor Shirley’s new-found productivity has seen him rise from the bottom of the league table from shy work to only 10th worst last year.

But Inside Croydon can now confirm that the Croydon councilor who fielded the fewest members’ questions between May 2023 and this year was…

Drum blow…

Labour’s Alisa Flemming, with a grand total of:

1

Numptiest of Numpties: Alisa Flemming, who only applied for one member all year

Yes. That’s right, one of the most unwieldy of Newman’s Numpties, a former council cabinet member who did more than her fair share to bankrupt the borough, has only submitted a solitary member’s inquiry in 2023-24.

In doing so, Norbury Park councilor Flemming, who has been on the council since 2010, set a new Croydon all-comer record, surpassing Chatterjee’s claims of two in one year in 2023.

Based on the basic councilor allowance paid to Flemming (he has no special responsibilities for her at present), that member’s claim alone cost the borough’s residents nearly £12,000.

But that doesn’t make Flemming the most expensive councilor in the borough…

For the second year in a row, this unwanted honor goes to Conservative cabinet member Scott Roche.

Roche (Shirley South) is one of three councilors to table just two members’ questions this year – and that’s one less than she bothered to do in the previous civic year.

Roche is a full-time politician, with his total income of around £80,000 a year paid for by the taxpayer. Cushty!

He has a day job as an assistant to an MP (Paul Scully for Sutton and Cheam), which sees him paid up to £42,000. He was also paid £39,195.12 for his role as Perry’s cabinet member for streets and environment.

Based on this, Tory Roche is Croydon’s most expensive councillor, with each of his membership questions costing the borough’s council tax payers £19,597.56.

Nice job if you can get it…

In the bottom four with Roche is another Tory councilor for Shirley, Sue Bennett. The people of Shirley seem particularly ill-served by their apparently inaction-free councillors).

Croydon councilor relegation zone

61, Richard Chatterjee (CON) 12
62, Patsy Cummings (LAB) 10
63=, Eunice O’Dame (LAB) 9
63=, Mohammed Islam (LAB) 9
65, Jason Cummings (CON) 6
66, Adele Benson (CON) 5
67=, Sherwan Chowhury (LAB) 2
67=, Scott Roche (CON) 2
67=, Sue Bennett (CON) 2
70, Alisa Flemming (LAB) 1

This bottom 10 includes five of the 34 Labor councilors and five of the 33 Tory councillors.

LibDem and Green councilors appear to have worked hard enough to avoid such embarrassment.

Expensive: Conservative cabinet member Scott Roche

For the civic year 2023-24, collectively Croydon’s 70 councilors dealt with 3,928 papers – enquiries, requests, planning applications and requests for help from residents in their wards.

This is an average of 56 casework for each adviser over the year – just over one a week. Some clearly take this task much more seriously than others.

Jason Cummings, the cabinet member for finance (and Tory MP candidate for Croydon East when the general election comes around), is a ward colleague of Roche and another in the bottom 10 for recorded member inquiries (six all year…).

He said Inside Croydon that the number of member questions is “just one measurement”.

Cummings said: “Most of what we do cannot be ‘searched’ very easily. Time spent with residents’ associations eg preparing meetings, meeting with officers, walking the property, non-app casework, answering emails, reporting street breakdowns, graffiti, there are lots of things that we do them which takes a lot of time but no system records them.

“I work full-time as a councilor so I don’t feel I’m weak, but if people want to portray me that way then they can. It goes with the job these days.”

None of this explains why Croydon Council still does not publish this data, as is common practice with many other local authorities.

Last year’s tables: Revealed: Croydon’s laziest and most expensive local councillors
This year’s tables: Toss-cars 2024: How much work has your adviser done?
Read more: Measure counselor effectiveness, not just casework
Read more: Making the case for councilors’ activity to be made public

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• ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2024, Croydon was named among the country’s most rotten boroughs for the seventh consecutive year in the annual summary of civic advertising Private magazine