Since Croydon’s decision to adopt the directly elected executive mayor model to run the local council, questions have been raised about the duties and responsibilities of ward councillors. Why does the council need these ward councillors? And what is it that they actually do?
The role of a councillor is multifaceted but in short a councillor represents the interests of their constituents by the making of policy and the monitoring of the implementation of this policy. The CRO was asked recently for a view on the role of a councillor, especially in the light of the new situation in Croydon where the executive Mayor has reserved all decision making powers for himself. Our view is that an elected councillor’s most important role is to hold the executive mayor to account either through hard process, such as council meetings, scrutiny meetings and consultations or through informal ‘soft’ process such as publicity and campaigning work on important issues that affect Croydon.
Last night’s council gave an indication of how councillors in Croydon can use their soft powers to hold their mayor to account. Mayor Perry does not command a majority in the Council chamber and this led to an upset for Perry last night as councillors voted down his motion to oppose London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s clean air plans for the Ultra Low Emission Zone expansion to the outer London boroughs. In a dramatic moment after a drawn vote Civic Mayor Alisa Flemming used her casting vote to throw out Perry’s motion. Likewise in a later motion proposed by the Labour group about the government’s refusal to allocate levelling up funding to Croydon was passed, again using the casting vote of the civic mayor.
Croydon is new to the directly elected mayor process, but it would seem that one of the first lessons that Mayor Perry should learn is how to carry a majority of the council with him. As Croydon has a progressive majority with Labour, the Greens and a Liberal Democrat forming the largest body of councillors, Mayor Perry is going to need to learn some more about the arts of negotiation and compromise in order to avoid regular upsets like last night.
The budget meeting(s) in March should prove interesting.
The CRO 
I agree that elected councillors are meant to represent their constituents interests, the best interests of the Borough, and that means holding the Mayor to account. I believe that Croydon is still a democracy (?), and as such any decisions should be made after considered, honest debate and voting by the elected councillors. The elected Mayor should simply be a voice of impartiality and ensure that meetings are run in a fair and balanced way, ie, as a chair of committees. The Mayor should have no power greater than the elected councillors, other than a casting vote at meetings if it becomes necessary. Other than that the Mayor can go about representing the Borough in an apolitical way as part of their civic duties.
By the way, I am still waiting to hear from those who campaigned for an elected Mayor, what is the process whereby an elected Mayor can be sacked by the people of Croydon, which was something highly touted in their campaign. I guess we will never know.
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Thanks for your reply SK. We will be covering some of these points some point this week. We assume that you had heard about the 15% Council Tax hike proposed by the Mayor (and approved by central government), so things are going to be very busy as residents, councillors and MPs are trying to dissuade the Mayor from ploughing ahead with this.
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I hadn’t heard about that. I hope that the residents and taxpayers of Croydon object in the strongest possible terms.
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I think that is on the cards. An online petition organised by ‘Inside Croydon’ now has over 16,000 signatures and lobbying and demonstrations are expected.
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