Croydon Council has been making waves on social media for the high levels of Redacted payments in its published data.
Croydon like all councils are required to published details of payments over £500. These payments includes details of the expense type, the budget, the amount, dates, and importantly the payee.
Some payee details are always redacted, this is done to protect individuals or highly sensitive information. But we have seen an increased redaction of payments at Croydon Council, and wrote about this problem in both September and April 2025
New research by Lee Nallalingham published on X/Twitter shows that in this financial year Croydon Council are redacting information at a far higher rate than most councils in London. Lee’s tweet explains this as below:
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BREAKING: Croydon Council has paid £316m to “redacted” suppliers so far this financial year.
That’s 49,224 redacted payments – over half of ALL payments the council has made, as per data available to mid December.
For context: The average London council made around £40m in redacted payments over the same period, roughly 8.6% of total spend.
Croydon’s figures are on another planet in comparison.
If you’re wondering how they ended up £1bn in debt and bankrupt three times, this is probably a good place to start.
I’m not accusing anyone of illegality. But numbers like this, combined with Croydon’s track record, are impossible to ignore.
The council has serious questions to answer.
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Redacting information at almost 6 times the rate of the average London council doesn’t inspire confidence, and makes one wonder – what are Croydon Council hiding?
Original Tweet https://x.com/LNallalingham/status/2008081180113977503?s=20
Lee Nallalingham can be found on X at https://x.com/LNallalingham
Croydon Council payments over £500 (source data) https://www.croydon.gov.uk/council-and-elections/budgets-and-spending/accounts-and-payments/payments-over-ps500
++++ Update 9th January from Lee Nallalingham ++++