By Gavin Mackintosh And Victoria Mckeown-
Battered and cash stripped Croydon Council has paid £700,000 for consultants and expert reports into its financial collapse and the multiple failings of Brick by Brick, its officials admitted today.
The figures which cynics feel may even have been approximated downwards, and still capable of increasing, cover the punitive costs of the government-imposed “improvement and assurance panel” imposed on the borough through to 2024, as well as work from auditors Grant Thornton and consultants Price Waterhouse Coopers for their efforts towards untangling the financial mess caused by the council’s loss-making house-builders.
The high costs resulting from years of mismanagement of the council administration, which counts itself as one of Britain’s very worst, reveals the somewhat wasted costs spent at the expense of worried residents
At a panel meeting chaired by Tony McArdle, council officials were forced to answer questions about the financial activities of the notorious council which this year has made more headlines than any other council in the Uk, and for the wrong reasons.
McArdle was appointed in January this year at the instruction of Robert Jenrick, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, to provide some meaningful oversight to the work of Croydon’s officials in keeping within their budgets. Unfortunately, Croydon Council has done badly in the management of its financial affairs.
The costs for the rest of the financial year are estimated to be to be £186,000, and a further £223,000 required for the following two financial years, according to a drafted account of costs so far in the council.
When asked how much Croydon Council paid its external auditors Grant Thornton for the Report in the Public Interest into the council’s financial situation, decision-making and governance published on 23 October 2020, the response was £65,000 for the October 2020 Report in the Public
Interest by Grant Thornton.
In response to a question about how much Croydon Council paid Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC) for its independent strategic review of Brick by Brick Croydon Limited and a number of other commercial ventures published on 13 November 2020, including the cost to the council of any supplementary work subsequently undertaken by PwC, the total answer was £168,300.”
The RIPI was the first full revelation of the financial problems of the council, and Grant Thornton’s auditors were severe in their criticism of the council’s lack of scrutiny and oversight of its accounts.
Scrutiny
The scrutiny came after aggrieved residents of the infamous Regina House gathered with their children to finally meet council officials to discuss the appalling state of their flats abandoned for years.
Conspicuously missing from the meeting was Alison Knight, the £200,000 a year director for homes, hired by the council chief executive, Katherine Kerswell in May to address the multiple woeful failings of the council.
The top director was apparently on annual leave, conveniently absent from an important meeting that called for more than an apology for the disrespectful treatment of its tenants.
Angry residents demanding swift action from the council after a damning independent report found Croydon’s housing services to be failing abysmally.
Council officials who attended included Hamida Ali, the council leader, and Patricia Hay-Justice, the cabinet member for homes.
The ITV News investigation, it is now clear, managed to discover a range of shortcomings with the council.
During the meeting, Stephen Tate, the council’s “director of growth, employment and regeneration”, admitted that almost half of the repair jobs on the properties failed to be completed within the contracted time frame by the council’s repairs contractor.
Residents were clearly unhappy at the snail’s pace of progress that has been made, supposedly towards Croydon Council becoming “the best landlords in the country”, a far-fetched aspiration thrown around at a recent Town Hall meeting.
And not all the figures brought forward by officials at last week’s meeting stacked up, either. The council claims to have spoken to more than 200 residents from Regina Road’s three blocks. But many of those attending at Stanley Halls said that no one had come to speak with them, calling into question the council’s own record-keeping.
Many residents spoke bitterly about the challenges of bringing up many children in small flats, with no privacy for teenagers and parents, no space for children to study, while mould and damp continued to damage everyone’s health.
The council has committed to improving their homes allocations policy, under which families are currently expected to use their living room as an extra bedroom if they do not have enough space for everyone to sleep in.
New council homes for 90 residents in the town centre were today announced named after the former MP for Croydon North who died in 2012. Wicks’ widow, Margaret, was the guest of honour at the opening ceremony, alongside the Mayor of Croydon, Sherwan Chowdhury.
The scheme is part of developer Hub’s 513-home regeneration of the old Taberner House site, which has built out extensively on to what was the only open space in the town centre, Queen’s Gardens.
Malcolm Wicks House now sits close to the new council offices, Bernard Weatherill House (better known as Fisher’s Folly), named after another former Croydon MP who became the House of Commons Speaker. In 2021, we can only imagine what those two proud parliamentarians might have thought of the state of the borough today.
Around 5,000 families on Croydon Council’s housing waiting list will be pleased with the news of brand new accommodation where mould will not be allowed to develop.
Legal and General will take ownership of the 35-storey second block that has been built on what was public-owned land and will include 251 flats that will all go for private sale.