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Council must accept ‘build anything, anywhere’ is not a policy

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CROYDON COMMENTARY: Fewer than a hundred protestors turned up at the Town Hall last night in support of MP Chris Philp’s planning demo. The default position of the Labour group that controls the council was to dismiss their concerns by claiming that they are all ‘Nimbys’.
Here, Purley resident JACK GRIFFIN suggests that the council’s approach ‘veers between the inappropriate, unnecessary and, sometimes, incoherent’

Council leader Tony Newman says he is ‘proud’ to be building so many homes for the private market

While it may be inferred that Chris Philp & Co are seeking “a ban on building homes in south of the borough”, it is not what’s being called for (at least, not out loud).

I received the MP’s communication through my residents’ association and he asserts that the council “should not destroy any family homes until all the brownfield sites in the borough have been used”.

I agree that it is likely – even probable – that there are more brownfield sites in other parts of the borough than the south. Yet it is a leap to claim that is seeking “a ban on building homes in south of the borough”.

I could post his communication at length, but it’s a bit turgid really, yet it does move to address an important point about how Croydon’s approach to local planning veers between the inappropriate, unnecessary and, sometimes, incoherent.

I’m not a particular fan of Philp, although those I know on the Purley BID quite rate him. But, my gawd, he is an improvement on his predecessor, “Gottaway”.

And of course, the treatment of Toni Letts is appalling. She has my sympathy, and all efforts should be made to pursue “the phantom shitter of Selhurst”.

Last nights Town Hall demo, attended by fewer than a hundred protestors

Philp’s suggestion that we “have local ‘Area Planning Committees’ where you divide Croydon up into three areas (say, north, central and south) and only councillors that area sit on its planning committee and decide for smaller applications – say less than 50 units – in that area”, isn’t entirely terrible (although I could see it promoting NIMBYism) and perhaps worthy of exploration, if only to be able to dismiss it rationally.

Build anything, anywhere, is not a policy.

Nor, as a Croydon planning officer friend who went to Reigate and Banstead told me, is Reigate’s BANAANA approach: Bugger All Not At All Not Anywhere.

Perhaps a secondary issue here is, aside from Philp’s campaigning for the south of the borough in the face of Paul Scott’s destructivism, where are Labour MPs Sarah Jones and Steve Reed in sticking up for their end of the manor?

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