Croydon fails to fill £275,000 chief executive job as interim stays on £1,500 a day
Croydon’s £275,000-a-year chief executive vacancy is still unfilled a year after the post fell vacant — and the council’s interim boss, Mike Jackson, will now stay on longer at a day rate of at least £1,500.
Mayor Jason Perry told last night’s full council meeting that nobody interviewed for the permanent post had been judged to have the “right experience and leadership” for the job, which has been empty since Katherine Kerswell left Fisher’s Folly a year ago.
Jackson, hired on an initial six-month interim contract after starting in August, will now remain in the hot seat beyond that term — meaning the bankrupt borough is facing another stretch paying a premium rate for the top job while the hunt for a permanent chief executive starts again.
The admission caps a frustrating year for the council. Four months ago, ads were placed in the trade press for a new chief executive — described at the time as a “champion” for the borough — yet none of the candidates who came forward made the cut.
At £1,500 a day, the cost of Jackson’s interim tenure is mounting fast. A full year at that rate works out at about £360,000 — nearly £100,000 more than the £275,000 salary budgeted for the permanent post. The £1,200-to-£1,500 daily band was set out in the council’s own pay policy statement for 2026-2027, approved by the appointments committee on 21 July.
The council describes payments to executive headhunters as “standard practice”, with fees for the search understood to run into the tens of thousands of pounds.
For Croydon, the failed recruitment is the latest expensive chapter in a decade of financial chaos. The borough is the only London council ever to have issued Section 114 notices — effectively declaring itself bankrupt — and it remains under a government-appointed team of commissioners who took control of its finances last year.
The chief executive role is arguably the toughest town hall job in the capital: steering a council of more than 500,000 residents through a government improvement programme while finding tens of millions of pounds in savings.
Recruiting the right person is not just about one appointment. With the permanent job going begging, the commissioners, councillors and officers are left trying to deliver the borough’s recovery plan without a long-term leader in place — and every month on an interim day rate adds to a bill that Croydon’s council tax payers ultimately pick up.
The saga also sits alongside other councils in London wrestling with money. Westminster is cutting hundreds of posts as it faces a funding gap, while four boroughs have been lobbying ministers for a fairer funding settlement. Meanwhile, Croydon has been awarded £1.79m of TfL money for safer roads — investment flowing in even as the council’s own finances stay under the microscope.
There is no timetable yet for a fresh recruitment round, and the council has not said how much longer Jackson will remain in post. For now, Croydon’s most important job stays open — and the meter keeps running.
The story of the vacancy reads like a slow-motion saga. A year ago, Kerswell’s departure left the council without a permanent chief executive for the first time in years. In July, the appointments committee set the £1,200-to-£1,500 day-rate band for an interim and agreed the pay policy underpinning it. A month later, Jackson — who had previously served as joint chief executive of Richmond and Wandsworth councils, overseeing services for more than half a million residents, and before that as chief executive of Bristol City Council — took up the interim post. By the autumn, the trade-press adverts for the permanent job had come and gone without a hire.
The council’s finances remain the backdrop to everything. In July last year, the government took control of Croydon’s finances and installed a team of commissioners, an unprecedented step that followed the borough’s Section 114 notices. The commissioners’ job is to force through the savings and asset sales needed to stabilise the council — a programme that needs a steady, permanent chief executive to drive it day to day.
Whether the problem is the salary, the job’s fearsome reputation, or simply a thin field of candidates willing to take on the role, the council has not said. What is clear is that the search is back to square one — and that Croydon will keep paying over the odds for its leadership until someone finally takes the job on a permanent basis.
Photo: Croydon Town Hall. Photo: el ui, CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons (file photo).
