Jason Perry is the Executive Mayor of Croydon
This borough isn’t an abstract idea to me, it’s home.
That’s why, when I first stood to be Croydon’s directly elected Mayor, I made a simple promise: to get our borough back on track. After years of failure, financial mismanagement and residents feeling ignored, Croydon needed leadership that listened and delivered.
Four years on, we have made real progress.
We’ve stabilised the council’s finances after Labour caused our bankruptcy three times. We’ve saved hundreds of millions of pounds by cutting waste and reducing red tape. We’ve restored a sense of grip and direction. Investors are coming back, confidence is returning, and Croydon is once again a place people believe in.
But what matters most to me is not the balance sheet. It’s whether residents feel heard and respected again.
I remember clearly one of the defining issues that led local people to demand a directly elected Mayor in the first place: planning. Under the previous Labour administration, residents felt decisions were being imposed on them, not made with them. Hundreds would gather to protest planning meetings. People who cared deeply about their neighbourhoods were too often dismissed or talked down to.
Family homes were being knocked down and replaced with developments that simply didn’t fit the character of the area. It felt, to many, like the system had lost its way.
Within two months of taking office, I scrapped the planning guidance that had opened the door to the worst of those schemes. It had become a free-for-all. That ended.
Since then, we’ve reset the relationship. We work constructively with developers, but always with residents at the heart of decisions. The difference is visible.
Not long ago, I bumped into a local residents’ association planning lead I used to see regularly at heated meetings. I joked that I hadn’t seen him in a while. He smiled and said, “Well Mr Mayor, I’ve had nothing to complain about.”
That, to me, says more than any report ever could. It shows we’re getting the basics right again.
Across the borough, we’re seeing the same story. Cleaner streets, with 98 per cent fly-tips cleared in 24 hours. A tougher approach to crime and antisocial behaviour, with crime falling dramatically. Investment going into our roads (double that of Labour), our parks and our public spaces. Over the next four years, we will deliver 16 new playgrounds and 16 outdoor gyms, giving families more places to spend time together and restoring pride in our neighbourhoods. This is just the tip of the iceberg – there’s so much more in progress that I just can’t fit into this article.
This is what steady, determined leadership looks like. Not grand promises that can’t be kept, but real, tangible improvements that people notice in their daily lives.
And yet, we are only part of the way through the job.
Croydon was let down for too long. Turning that around takes time. The progress we’ve made is hard-won, and it is not guaranteed.
That is why I am standing again.
Because the risk of changing course now is real. The risk of losing momentum, of undoing the stability we’ve built, of returning to the failures of the past, is not something I am willing to accept for this borough.
I’m proud of what we’ve achieved together. But I’m even more focused on what comes next: continuing to rebuild our finances, unlocking further investment, improving our town centre, and making sure every part of Croydon shares in our recovery.
Croydon is back on track. Now we need to keep it there.
Lots done. Lots more to do.