Macarnage: work has begun on Nos 59, 61 and 63 Higher Drive, destroying trees which were supposed to be retained and before changes to the planning permission have been granted
Residents on a plush suburban street on a hillside in Purley have been thrown into a panic since the weekend after demolition workers showed up and started grubbing up trees and clearing the site of not one… not two… not three large detached houses, but FOUR.
And according to locals, it is all being done without fully approved planning permissions or amendments.
The original scheme was for three of the houses, and was submitted by Macar Developments. It was granted approval by council planners in January 2020 after a favourable report from a Croydon Council planning officer who later got a job with an architects firm that now carries out work for clients including… Macar Developments.
In the past year, Macar has submitted at least eight applications to remove or significantly amend the conditions that had been attached to their original planning application. Not all of these have been granted approval.
Due notice: the council sign was only posted last week
Indeed, Nicola Townsend, Croydon’s head of planning “management”, had a notice posted on Higher Drive only last week, inviting comments and objections before a deadline of February 3.
Residents complain that for some of the proposed changes, the details are not yet available on the council’s planning portal.
Macar’s wrecking crew don’t appear to want to wait for such niceties, it seems.
The locals say that demolition work has begun and that mature trees which were to have been retained as a condition of the original permission have already been removed.
The local residents’ association, Foxley, and a councillor, Simon Brew, both contacted Townsend and the council’s planning department over the weekend to appeal for urgent enforcement action, but so far without any success.
In 2019, Macar Developments applied for planning permission to demolish three houses on Higher Drive – Nos 59, 61 and 63 – which they want to replace with three blocks of flats, of up to five storeys high (on a street of mainly two-storey family homes).
Macar’s blocks, with the Moat housing association lined up as buyers, would deliver 40 new homes, 20 of them for affordable rent. The estimated market sale value of the new homes is at least £10million.
Massive development: Macar’s application drawings failed to convey the true scale of what they want to build
In many respects, the scheme symbolises much of what established residents in Croydon’s semi-detached suburbia distrust about the planning system, as it transforms the character of their neighbourhood, into which many of them have invested their livelihoods and life’s savings.
When the original scheme was being considered by the planning department, it attracted 167 comments. Not one was in favour of the proposals.
The objections included those from three separate residents’ associations and from Croydon South’s Conservative MP, Chris Philp.
But the housing proposals also highlight the dilemma for planners faced with a clear need to deliver thousands more homes, a demand that is factored into the targets and policies handed down by the Conservative government, of which Philp is a junior minister.
Under Croydon’s Local Plan, the council is supposed to oversee the delivery of 32,890 new homes in the 20 years to 2036. Of these, about one-third of the homes are expected to be built on “windfall sites”, such as the brownfield sites offered by the demolition of three large houses on Higher Drive.
Macar Town: the developers with close council connections have now started work on No67, too
As the officer’s report recommending approval two years ago stated, “Windfall schemes which provide intensification of existing residential areas therefore play a crucial role in meeting the need for new homes.
“The proposed development would create a significant net increase in new homes and would make a contribution to the borough achieving its housing targets.”
With the scheme providing 50 per cent affordable husing – five one-bed flats at London Affordable Rent, 13 two-bed-roomed homes at affordable rent, and two three-bed affordable apartments- what has been proposed compares very favourably with anything that the council’s own house-builders, Brick by Brick, ever managed, even with millions of pounds in subsidies from, among others, the Mayor of London.
None of which, however, ought to provide developers carte blanche to go ahead without complying with planning conditions, or without planning permission altogether.
As well as the works being carried out at 59 to 63, yesterday there was been a crew on site at No67 High Drive, for which there has never been any planning permission granted.
According to one worried neighbour, “There were originally three houses being bulldozed. Now it seems that a fourth has been added.
Mystery house: no one knows what fate awaits No67 – there’s never been a planning application
“The development was originally for 40 flats, the biggest development to hit us locally. Now, they’ve started work at No67 Higher Drive, too, without planning approval.”
It is understood that offers to sell up were made to the owner of the house between the two buildings sites – No65 Higher Drive – but they were turned down.
“Where this might leave them, with a huge block of flats on one side and goodness knows what’s being proposed on the other, heaven only knows.”
The Croydon planning officer who recommended approval for 59, 61 and 63 Higher Drive was Jan Slominski. That’s the same Jan Slominski who left his council job to go to work for architects HTA Design.
Planned: Jan Slominski recommended approval for the Higher Drive scheme
When at the council, Slominski recommended approval for a similar-sized – 39 flats – Macar over-development in Coulsdon. Having helped push that scheme through the planning system, he then resurfaced working for HTA Design on its delivery.
With pre-application advice having been given to Macar on Higher Drive, Slominski will have provided a crucial insight into what the council will have found “acceptable”. Or put another way, what they could get away with.
Macar are the developers who have Natalie Gentry among their directors. Natalie is married to Ross Gentry, a senior member of the Croydon Council planning department and a former colleague of Slominski.
As Inside Croydon has reported previously, it appears to be a common practice among developers to “game the system”: they seek planning permission for one scheme and then, maybe a year or so later, come back with significant “amendments”, by-passing elected councillors on the planning committee and getting nodded through by planning staff with little attention being given by Croydon enforcement officials.
As a measure of the sheer scale of the changes being made to Higher Drive by this scheme, the three houses that Macar are demolishing between them cover 572 sq m. Macar’s new blocks of flats under their original application had 3,138 sq m – more than five times bigger.
And now Macar’s as yet unapproved planning amendment for 59, 61 and 63 Higher Drive includes what they describe as “slight increases to slightly enlarge the footprint at the rear in which would involve both outer wings (on the north and south sides of the building) extending further rearwards at ground, first, second and third floors”.
Affordable housing: built for Moat, 20 of the 40 flats will be offered at ‘affordable’ rent
In their urgent email to the council’s planning enforcement officers, Foxley Residents’ Association wrote, “Not only has work started without full permission, but a number of the trees that were supposed to be retained have also been cut down.
“Can Planning Enforcement please intervene urgently as this is now beyond impunity and taking the council and the residents for a ride.”
And Simon Brew, a councillor for Purley and Woodcote ward, also wrote to council officials. “Application 19/03282/FUL was granted permission but the developers discovered that it couldn’t be built as approved without major alterations to the design, so 21/007772/CONR was lodged early in 2021.
“This is still shown on the website as awaiting decision, yet when passing the site last week, I saw that some work had started.
“Please intervene and tell them to stop work until the design is fully approved – it may turn out that the new design also cannot be built.”
Read more: Purley residents outrage over planning’s ‘husband and wife act’
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If this was Sicily, they would shrug and say what can you do against Cosa Nostra.
Here we are, and unbelievably it’s happening in Croydon, and all those involved with ‘clean hands’. I am sorry but this stinks.
I don’t think Croydon is so devoid of appropriate land for intelligent development without trashing established and settled neighbourhoods.
What we need is a proper plan, and a monitoring officer.
Where is Kerswell? Asleep at the wheel?
So they stripped away more mature, healthy trees …….. never mind, they only produce oxygen that we need to breathe and try to clean our self-inflicted filthy air.
Another developer supported by a spineless council with questionable governance. Conflicted all the way…
Why oh why is this allowed to keep happening in Croydon? Other London Borough’s planning departments do not bend over for these greedy developers, why do Croydon? These lovely parts of the borough are being ruined, and the character of the area is vanishing before our eyes, it is painful, and so sad to helplessly watch it happening. I have just seen the planning proposal from a developer to build three large detached houses in the back garden of number 11 Blacksmiths Hill. It is a total overdevelopment of the site, and will ruin the lives of my friends (near neighbours) and the other neighbours. There is no way this development would be grated permission anywhere else, but I fear given what is happening all over the South Croydon area, Croydon Council will fail in their duty to protect and serve their residents of Blacksmiths Hill by rejecting this absurd proposal.
Your observation that other London Boroughs are not contorting themselves to assist the developers to such a level is valid.
I represented one of numerous Residents’ Associations that were attending in a meeting chaired by Ms Heather Cheeseborugh (head of uncontrolled intensification at Croydon Council) a few years ago when the already aggressive new housing target for Croydon was in the process of being uplifted “again”.
I took the opportunity to table a question directly to Ms Cheesbrough with all the RA listening.
My question was “How come Bromley, which is broadly similar to Croydon, has not found it necessary to create such overly permissive planning policies and is not permitting such intensive developments?” Ms Cheesebrough looked directly at me and completely dismissed my question with the response “Bromley is a basket case.”.
The meeting moved on. I wonder which of Croydon and Bromley would now been deemed a basket case?
Yes, Croydon has chosen to respond to housing targets in a highly skewered way that was politically driven by Cllr Paul Scott.
the only way to influence the people who seem hell bent on destroying* Croydon is through the ballot box. They are simply not listening. Perhaps if the ruling party gets a bloody nose in May, they may start to think about the consequences of their own actions.
Perhaps.
But then the obvious alternative are from the same party that, in national government, has passed the planning laws and policies which Croydon and all local councils are obliged to follow and to implement.
So how’s that going to work out, Anita?
Where’s Heather Cheesbrough ? – busy trying to sort out her exit having botched an attempt to leave earlier in the year. Her new employers changed their minds. Think they read Inside Croydon?
Croydon planning is a shambles – the reason we are having a Mayoral election.
‘Plush suburban street on a hillside in Purley’! That made me laugh. Until I stopped. The McCarnage continues at no. 67 next door to St Barnabas Church and residents, like me, fear an increase in accidents as people in the identikit blocks will be forced to park their cars on the street.
It’s a shame a number of developers ‘play the system’, some putting in basic plans, change the structures then seek retrospective applications, or ‘amendments’.
Macarnage are one, there are others.
Some seek ‘prior approval’ and then attempt to make additions, and find ways around providing affordable homes.
What is happening to the south of the Borough is almost criminal, with every little plot of land being eyed by developers.
The drive by the Council to construct more homes in an attempt to be ‘the fastest growing London Borough’ is a little short-sighted when employment opportunities in the borough aren’t growing at a similar rate, largely due to the conversion of offices to housing, transport issues, the failure of Westfield/Hammerson, etc.
In terms of the lack of job opportunities, David, you forgot to mention the 500-plus jobs axed in the last 18 months by… Croydon Council. That’s a significant economic hit.
Very true, along with many major employers who have now left Croydon never to return.
67 Higher Drive is also a Macar development, approved under 16/00250/P which has a tree protection plan for associated trees, as does 59-63.
Both sets of plans have conditions attached which require a number of conditions to be met before any works begin.
Construction logistics Plans have been approved and state hoarding will be erected !!
Photos suggest fencing which does NOT secure the site(s).
I feel planning enforcement officers should visit to ensure conditions are complied with.
Just checked all the planning history and all the ‘pre-commencement conditions’ were met so technically demolition can begin, however I wonder whether demolition applications were made to LBC Building Control due to the size of the existing dwellings ??
Unfortunately Google hasn’t been updated so viewing the sites remotely isn’t possible, thus I wonder if the scant construction management plans are being followed ??
Given the lack of public transport I do wonder what the impact on local roads will result given 24 parking bays for 40 flats of mixed tenure ??