The show goes on as police fears of tumultuous protests over Croydon’s Fairfield Halls report fail to materialise

By Tara O’Connor, Local Democracy Reporter

Police were braced for protests at a heated council debate over the spiralling costs of the multi-million-pound Fairfield Halls refurbishment – but just a handful of residents turned up.

The extraordinary council meeting at Croydon Town Hall on Thursday night focussed on a damning report into how the refurbishment went £37.5million over budget.

Met police were stationed at the town hall for the duration of the meeting, which lasted nearly four hours, despite only four residents watching proceedings from the public gallery.

The report, by the council’s auditors Grant Thornton, found there were “serious financial control and legal failings” in the project and payments of more than £60 million went out to the council-owned developer Brick by Brick to carry out the work without “properly executed written contracts”.

Sarah Ironmonger from Grant Thornton told councillors: “It is hard to explain how difficult we found it to find the final cost of the project.

£67.5m is significantly more than the £30m that was approved and we have seen no evidence of that being formally reported back to members.”

At the meeting, council leader Hamida Ali revealed she sent the report  to the borough commander, chief superintendent David Stringer.

She said: “The report before us sets out extremely serious matters and serious failures by the council.

“This report describes the council we were and not the council we are today.”

The Conservative opposition put forward a motion to send the report on to  police.

It was proposed by deputy leader of the shadow cabinet, Councillor Lynne Hale.

Earlier in the meeting, she said: “There is no doubt public trust has been lost and residents are understandably keen for some proper accountability.

“It’s just not good enough to say, oh it happened years ago, nothing to do with us and we have apologised.

When millions of pounds of taxpayers money is involved, you simply cannot shrug your shoulders and walk away from this debacle which happened on your watch.”

The motion led to a lengthy back and forth between the opposing sides of the chamber, with Labour members arguing they would not vote it through as the report had already been handed to the police.

In response, Cllr Ali said: “I have already written to David Stringer to make him aware of this report. They make the judgement about investigation of crime thresholds.”

Conservative councillor Jason Cummings said: “The amendment that we are proposing is a very simple one, it doesn’t involve the word fraud anywhere, it says the report in the public interest should be sent to the police.

If it has already been sent, there should be no problem.’

But deputy leader of the council Stuart King said the motion was “not a proper way to take serious and significant decisions”.

The motion to send the report to the police was voted down by the council’s Labour majority by 30 to 20 votes.

The debate marked the first time since March 2020 all councillors were  present in the chamber.

Pictured: Extraordinary council meeting at Croydon Town Hall