The council’s moved in for yet another land grab.
This is how Croydon Council treats residents with contempt. Residents have been given just one month’s notice to vacate garages off College Green
Notices went up last week on the garages behind homes on College Green in Crystal Palace, giving residents just one month’s notice to remove all their possessions.
This land grab is not being done on behalf of big business, as the council did when sending in the heavies to shut small businesses out of their place of work at the Allder’s building.
This time it is being done for Brick by Brick, the in-house house-builders, who reckon that they can squeeze 80 flats into the space currently occupied by the garages, behind the existing homes on College Green, Wakefield Gardens and Highfield Road.
Residents on Highfield Road say that they have received no correspondence from the council regarding Brick by Brick’s plans, even though the proposed new buildings would back on to their gardens.
And as with the recent “consultation” conducted on parking permits, although the council ought to hold records of the names and addresses of all those who rent the garages, they don’t appear to have bothered writing to them directly.
There has been no public consultation conducted so far.
Many residents have expressed their shock and surprise at the move, and concern that one month’s notice, at a time of year when many families might be away from home on summer holidays, is inadequate.
The council’s position appears to be that those renting the garages have contracts which allow for just one month’s notice.
“The impact of increasing the footprint of College Green by over 45 per cent will be unmanageable,” one resident posted on a Crystal Palace Facebook group.
“Already there is over-demand for parking and school places.
“The area for the proposed housing is miniature and in no way suitable for sustainable housing.
“The area at the top of the estate has a pair of owls that nest there and are a pleasure to hear flying over the estate at night.
The garages site off College Green, where BxB wants to squeeze in 80 flats at the back of existing residents homes
“We have not been consulted and this is looking like a signed and delivered deal already!”
The council announced recently that it was handing over another 60 sites to Brick by Brick for housing schemes, many of the properties including council-owned garages such as those at College Green, so the manner in which residents are evicted from their garages in Crystal Palace may soon become familiar practice around the borough (There is a full list of Brick by Brick’s “pipeline” sites available by clicking here).
The notices to quit the College Green garages – dated July 31 – may have even come as a surprise to the councillors for the area.
Stephen Mann, one of the Labour councillors for Crystal Palace and Upper Norwood ward, has offered to meet residents to discuss the situation.
Because of the summer holidays, Mann and his colleagues, who include Town Hall veteran Pat Ryan, do not plan to hold a ward surgery session until September – after the deadline date for residents to vacate the garages.
“Brick by Brick will do a consultation and we as councillors will hold them to it,” Mann tried to reassure residents.
Referring to exisiting Brick by Brick sites in the ward – which includes one with houses being sold on the private market for £600,000 each – Mann wrote that these were approved before he was elected for the ward, “but we will fight hard with residents for the best deal.
“At this stage I think all I can say is it is not a done deal, be it any units or no units, and having worked with residents at Carberry Road and Bedwardine, we have been able to secure meaningful changes.”
- Listen to the latest Under The Flyover podcast, where Emma Hope-Fitch talks bulldozers, slow worms, pirate books and cake: click here to find out more
- Become an Inside Croydon supporter today. For £5 per month enjoy access to exclusive content like the Under The Flyover podcasts, as well as money-saving special offers, while helping to support the borough’s only independent news outlet.
- Click here for more details
Inside Croydon is a member of the Independent Community News Network- Inside Croydon works together with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and BBC London News
- Inside Croydon named Journalist of the Year at 2018 Anna Kennedy Online Autism Heroes Awards
- ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: For two consecutive years, 2017 and 2018, Inside Croydon has been the source for two award-winning nominations in Private Eye magazine’s annual celebration of civic cock-ups
- In 2018, Inside Croydon had 1.6million pages viewed by more than half a million unique visitors
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or what to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
Yet another unacceptable site for residential development which will have an adverse impact upon neighbours as well as being substandard accommodation for future occupiers. This sort of site would never have been considered by the previous Labour administration but then planning considerations and decent standards (or common decency) have been dropped in recent times.
Garages often become used for general storage, not used to keep parked cars off the road. If these garages are genuinely used to garage cars, then they should be kept as garages.
The results of loss of garages includes not just in more cars parked on the road, but in parking on the greens and grass verges– which destroys them.
If they are general storage, maybe there is a case for redeveloping as housing.
Judging by the bird’s eye view of the site, it looks a really narrow sitein any case, so the houses would be very narrow, without garden space. Is redevelopment really viable here????
The reason garages are so often used for general storage is that modern houses are just not big enough. They need to be seen as unattached house extensions rather than disposable luxuries. This site looks no more improbable than any the weird perceptions of Captain Scott of the Council now deems suitable for development. Every bit of land, however tiny, is at risk….and some are just plain daft and their development would disfigure or diminish our local environment in the same way that the imperious and uncaring imposition of the horrendous waste bins did last year. Just look, for example, at the tiny bit of land adjacent to Ruskin House. That is the only bit of green in that part of Croydon until you get to Lloyd Park further up the hill. There is nothing else green or pleasant in that part of town, nowhere to go and sit even if it is by a busy road…..but its going to be an infeasible number of micro-flats and housing, no garages of course…..and the concreting over of the town will continue. Heartless and unfeeling, our great planning Councillors.
The other reason garages, even in new-build houses, aren’t used for cars is that cars are so much bigger. A modern VW Golf is a foot wider than its Beetle ancestor, and the Golf isn’t a big car. If you can get it in a garage you’ll have to climb out of the sunroof.
The residents should consult a lawyer and pronto – maybe a ‘Pro-Bono’ one if necessary – and also ramp up the publicity on the council’s shabby dealings… as you are doing (an excellent job of) with Inside Croydon…
Des.