South Norwood councillor quits as special advisor at DEFRA

CROYDON IN CRISIS: Louis Carserides is a third councillor forced to alter their register of interests after questioning from Inside Croydon, as the long-time aide of MP Steve Reed quits his government job.

EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES

An Inside Croydon investigation has uncovered a third Croydon councillor who has broken the Town Hall’s Code of Conduct by failing to update their register of interests promptly.

In this latest case, the councillor had started and quit a new day job before any council officials had even noticed, without any apparent admonishment from those responsible, such as the Monitoring Officer whose job includes maintaining standards at the cash-strapped council.

It was only late yesterday afternoon that Louis Carserides, the Labour councillor for South Norwood, managed to update his register of interests to reflect his current status (which is unemployed). But that was only after Inside Croydon had raised questions with the council’s senior legal official, Stephen Lawrence-Orumwense, and with Carserides himself.

For six months, since July last year – just after the General Election – Carserides had been a special adviser working at the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs for the Secretary of State, Steve Reed OBE, the MP for Streatham and Croydon North.

For some unexplained reason, letting the water companies continue polluting our waterways, lumping inheritance tax on Jeremy Clarkson and land-owning farmers, and having to cope with mountains of bullshit had somehow quickly lost its allure for Carserides.

Carserides appears to have left his job at DEFRA around the turn of the year.

Not that his SPAD status ever made it on to Carserides’s register of interest at the council, since until yesterday it was still showing that he worked as a senior researcher in MP Reed’s parliamentary office.

Carserides has worked for Reed in some capacity or another since 2018, so his decision to move on, without immediately having another job to go to, has seen some eyebrows raised among his councillor colleagues.

Carserides has been councillor for South Norwood since a by-election in May 2021 – his selection for the ward vacancy supported at the time by the local MP, Reed.

Carserides is the third Croydon councillor that iC has discovered to be breaking the rules which are supposed to ensure public scrutiny, transparency and honesty.

Last month, we reported how Conservative council cabinet member Scott Roche had not updated his record for two years, leaving it providing false and misleading information.

Carserides and Roche both managed to update their personal LinkedIn profiles long before they got around to amending their official council register of interest. But unlike the council record, LinkedIn is not a legal requirement.

All councillors are required by law, under Section 30 of the Localism Act 2011, to keep their register of interests up to date.

Before Roche, Inside Croydon reported how Clive “Thirsty” Fraser, the Labour councillor and deputy chair of the council’s planning committee, had gone for almost nine months without bothering to mention that he has a full-time job working for the planning department of another London borough.

As usual with Croydon Council, no disciplinary action appears to have been taken in any of the cases.

Catherine Wilson, the Labour councillor who is supposed to chair the ethics committee at the dysfunctional council, has also refused to answer questions about her lack of action over the cases of Fraser, Roche and now Carserides (there may yet be others…).

Why does any of this matter?

Croydon Council is a basket-case local authority in large part because it has failed to get the basics right, like keeping accurate and up-to-date records.

There is a mechanism within the council for keeping a check on councillors’ (and council staff’s) register of interests, a responsibility that falls to the Monitoring Officer, the council’s most senior lawyer, who is Lawrence-Orumwense.

It was the failure to keep proper checks and balances in place, and to insist on such matters, that contributed to the council’s tailspin into effective bankruptcy in 2020. But as the examples of the councillors’ inaccurate register demonstrate, even on such a routine matter, those checks are not taking place.

When asked, the council falls back on its routine explanation that it is the responsibility of councillors, “… to update their register of interests within 28 days of becoming aware of any new interest or of a change to a registered interest”.

Clearly, this is not happening, often for months at a time.

This ought to be even more troubling since, as a council spokesperson repeated this week, “At every formal council meeting that is held with councillors, they are asked if they need to update their declaration.”

Again, this is clearly not working. “Thirsty” Fraser went the best part of the year without one mention of his new planning job at Hounslow Council as a declaration of interest, even when attending planning committees.

It could be worse. Much, much worse. Because if £150,000 per year council lawyer Lawrence-Orumwense and his legal team are missing this kind of routine stuff, what else are they failing to keep a check on, too?

Inside Croydon has moved to Bluesky. Click here to join us there for latest updates and insights

Check out our archive of podcasts on Spotify, including our monthly news discussion panel show thingy, the Croydon Insider, and The Andrew Fisher Interview

PAID ADS: To advertise your services or products to our near 10,000 weekday visitors to the site, as featured on Google News Showcase, email us inside.croydon@btinternet.com for our unbeatable ad rates

Inside Croydon – If you want real journalism, delivering real news, from a publication that is actually based in the borough, please consider paying for it. Sign up today: click here for more details

If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com

As featured on Google News Showcase

We offer FREE ads to community groups when they have members who are paid subscribers to Inside Croydon

Our comments section on every report provides all readers with an immediate “right of reply” on all our content. Our comments policy can be read by clicking here