Croydon’s new mayor has defended a choice to make all decisions himself.

He was grilled for two and a half hours by the council’s overview and scrutiny committee on Monday (June 27).

Conservative Mayor Jason Perry was asked why he chose not to delegate powers to his appointed eight cabinet members.

Cabinet members get £27,503 on top of their basic £11,692 councillor allowance, while the deputy mayor, Jason Cummings who is also cabinet member for finance, gets £30,352 on top.

At the scrutiny meeting, councillor Leila Ben-Hassel asked: “What is your justification for not delegating any powers  to the cabinet?

"And considering that the special responsibility allowance is set and commensurate to the level of responsibility are you planning on readjusting this with the reduced level of responsibility?”

She asked the mayor whether he would reduce the money paid to cabinet members.

But Mayor Perry defended his decision.

He said: “This is the first time this borough has had directly elected mayor and I think there is a point of view that this person has been elected and then the first thing they do is give all their powers away.

"There is kind of an element of, you’ve been entrusted to do a job and to give it all away from day one is unwise.

“If you were brought in to deal with a company that was in trouble I don’t think the first thing you would do is to delegate powers.

"My way of working is to get that full understanding of how things are operating, we are all learning how this model works. 

"Over time as things settle down  I will be delegating powers where appropriate.

“I feel strongly that to just hand out powers without knowing exactly where we’re going would be unwise, so ye in time there will be greater delegation.”

On allowances, Mayor Perry said cabinet members are still “doing their full role” so should be entitled to their full allowances.

He added: “The cabinet members are very much dealing with the detail and working with the senior management team to deliver on the priorities.

"They don’t have that final piece of decision making [but] they are very much part of the process, I am very much a team player.”