Plan for 300 homes on Green Belt angers Addington

insidecroydon

12 years ago

A packed residents’ meeting in Addington this week heard of developer plans to build 300 homes on Green Belt land at the bottom of Gravel Hill.

Conservative councillor Jason Cummings told an audience of more than 100 people at the annual meeting of the Addington Residents’ Association on Tuesday night that Persimmon Homes’ proposal to develop Huntingfield, the four fields between Addington Village bus and tram interchange and Featherbed Lane, was “a real enquiry”.

Persimmon Homes recently reported a 40 per cent increase in their sales over a year ago, which they attributed to the ConDem Government’s Help to Buy Scheme.

Addington residents resisted plans for a hypermarket on the site in the early 1980s and a Sainsbury’s in 1993, but even strong opposition this time around might not be enough to overcome the Conservative-led government’s national policy for house building.

The arrival of Tramlink, the expansion of the petrol station on Selsdon Park Road into a Marks and Spencer’s retail outlet, the decimation of the beeches in neighbouring Addington Park and the creation of a National Grid complex on one of the fields has all served to undermine the “green” feel to the area.

No formal planning application is yet with the local authority, but the residents are wary of a large development which would come close to linking suburban development from New Addington to Addington and Addington Village.