2022 Croydon London Borough Council election

Result of the 2018 borough election

The thirty-two London boroughs were established in 1965 by the London Government Act 1963. They are the principal authorities in Greater London and have responsibilities including education, housing, planning, highways, social services, libraries, recreation, waste, environmental health and revenue collection. Some of the powers are shared with the Greater London Authority, which also manages passenger transport, police and fire.[1]

Since its formation, Croydon has variously been under Labour control, no overall control and Conservative control. Councillors have usually been elected only from the Labour and Conservative parties, with the most recent exceptions being the election of a single Liberal Democrat councillor in the 1998 and 2002 elections. The council has had an overall Labour majority since the 2014 election, in which Labour won forty seats while the Conservatives won thirty. Croydon Council has had 70 seats since the 1978 Council election, with 36 seats required for a majority. New election boundaries were put in place for the most recent council election in 2018, which saw Labour maintain its majority with 41 seats with 44.5% of the vote to the Conservative Party's 29 seats with 40.1% of the vote. The Green Party received 7.7% of the vote and the Liberal Democrats received 5.8% of the vote across the borough, though neither won any seats. The incumbent leader of the council is the Labour councillor Hamida Ali, who has held that position since 2020.

In January 2019, a Labour councillor for Norbury and Pollards Hill, Maggie Mansell, died. She had served on the council for twenty-five years.[2] A by-election was held in March 2019 to replace her, which was won by the Labour candidate Leila Ben-Hassell.[3] Ben-Hassell was a local party official who was working as a project manager for the City of London Corporation.[4] A Labour councillor for Fairfield, Niroshan Sirisena, resigned in September 2019.[5] Siresena was under police investigation following a "serious incident".[6] The subsequent by-election on 7 November 2019 was won by the Labour candidate Caragh Skipper on a reduced majority, while the Liberal Democrats more than doubled their share of the vote.[7]

In October 2020, after it became clear that the council was facing financial difficulty, the council leader Tony Newman resigned. The Labour councillor Hamida Ali was chosen by the council's Labour group to replace him. Ali established a new cabinet without Newman, Newman's finance lead Simon Hall who had also resigned, and the sitting cabinet members Stuart Collins, Alison Butler and Paul Scott.[8] In November 2020, Croydon council announced its "de facto bankruptcy" by issuing two section 114 notices.[9] In February 2021, Newman and Hall were suspended from the Labour party after a report was produced into their conduct in the lead-up to the effective bankruptcy of the council. In March, they both resigned from the council.[10] A Labour councillor for South Norwood, Jane Avis, resigned for personal reasons in March 2021. A Conservative councillor for Kenley, Steve O'Connell, resigned in March 2021 ahead of the 2021 London Assembly election in which he was also standing down as an Assembly Member. A Conservative councillor for Park Hill & Whitgift, Vidhi Mohan, resigned at the same time "due to increasing demands in [his] professional life".[11]

By-elections to replace all five councillors who had resigned were held on 6 May 2021 alongside the 2021 London mayoral election and London Assembly election. Each of the by-elections was won by its ward's incumbent party.[12] Newman's ward, Woodside, elected the Labour candidate Michael Bonello.[13] Simon Hall's ward, New Addington North, elected the Labour candidate Kola Agboola. South Norwood was won by the Labour candidate Louis Carserides. Kenley was won by the Conservative candidate Ola Kolade and Park Hill & Whitgift was won by the Conservative candidate Jade Appleton.

In February 2021, the Labour councillor and former Conservative MP Andrew Pelling called for Ali to resign unless she could "prove that she asked... questions when she was in Newman's cabinet" about a £37.5 million overspend during the refurbishment of Fairfield Halls.[14] Pelling was expelled from the Labour Party after he registered a new political party called Putting Croydon First.[15]

A campaign group supporting an elected mayor for Croydon called DEMOC started a petition in February 2020, which they submitted to the council in September 2020. The mayoral system would replace the leader-and-cabinet system, whereby the leader of the council is chosen by the majority party or coalition of parties. In January 2021, the council announced that a referendum would be held in October of that year.[16] The government minister Luke Hall said that the council should hold the referendum in May 2021 instead, alongside elections for the Mayor of London and London Assembly. The Labour councillor Sean Fitzsimons defended the choice to hold the referendum in October, saying that the prospective mayor could then be elected alongside the council in May 2022.[17] The council also cited technical limitations about how it could spend money under the terms of the council's section 114 notice which required Hall to amend the law to facilitate the referendum.[18]

The Conservatives, including the Conservative MP Chris Philp, campaigned in favour of an elected mayor.[19] Labour opposed the mayoral system, including both Croydon Labour MPs. The Green Party also opposed the mayoral system, instead advocating a change to the committee system.[20]

The referendum question was "How would you like the London Borough of Croydon to be run?", with the options being "By a leader who is an elected councillor chosen by a vote of the other elected councillors. This is how the council is run now." or "By a mayor who is elected by voters. This would be a change from how the council is run now."[21] The result of the referendum was a large majority in favour of the mayoral system, with more than 80% of valid votes being cast in favour of the change.[22]

Croydon mayoral referendum
7 October 2021

Choice	Votes	%
Elected mayor	47,165	80.4
Cabinet system	11,519	19.6
Total votes	58,897	100.00
Source: [23]

Andrew Pelling was previously elected as the Labour candidate.