How the council’s planners help developers dodge conditions

The case of 158 Purley Downs Road is an object lesson in what lengths some senior council staff will go to in order to help property developers circumvent building regulations and bamboozle councillors on the planning committee. By STEVE WHITESIDE

The last few weeks, on a suburban road tucked away between Sanderstead railway station and Riddlesdown, have witnessed the demolition of yet another detached family home, making way for two terraces that the developers describe as comprising seven “units”.

How did we, in 2023, arrive at a situation where 158 Purley Downs Road came to be bulldozed in the interests of “intensification”? How did the council’s various planning processes perform? And what lies behind the flashy computer images and planners’ councilspeak?

There was what I would call “fabrication” within the planning documents and a lack of proper scrutiny by council officials, as well as intellectual dishonesty within reports and presentations to the councillors on the planning committee. It’s all here, more of what has helped allow so many often poor-quality homes to be dumped around Croydon over the past five years or so.

The developers at Purley Downs Road are New Place Associates, a firm which has worked on a plethora of building schemes around the south of the borough, and which has had some connections with subsidiaries of another development company to feature regularly on these pages, Macar, which has a director who enjoys intimately close relationships with certain members of the council’s planning department.

Having been around the block a few times, in Kenley, Coulsdon and Woodcote, and then knocked some of those suburban blocks down for profitable developments, New Place might be expected to have a close understanding of what the planning officials and committee at the council might expect. But with 158 Purley Downs Road, the directors of New Place, together with HTA Design – the sometimes favourites of Brick by Brick – nonetheless applied to the council for pre-application advice. Not once, but twice…

Pre-application advice, or a “pre-app”, is the service where council officials meet with the developer and advise them (in writing supposedly) of any improvements to the scheme that would need to be made before submission of a full application. For a scheme such as this one, the fees for such helpful steers from council officials is £2,400 (including VAT), paid to the local authority.

This is the stage at which planning staff once took the opportunity to tell an applicant to ensure that any full application included the requisite information regarding the existing and proposed levels of a building – especially important around the often undulating hillside sites in Croydon.

In the kind of laborious exercise in which Croydon Council has developed a speciality in opacity and secrecy, over the course of nearly two years we asked for copies of any comments and advice provided by staff as part of these applications.

The council told us that, “We have kept no notes following the meeting.” This, of itself, might strike any reasonable member of the public as unusual, if not downright suspicious.

But they also said, “There are however some notes provided by the applicant’s team which we agreed were an accurate record of the meeting and this has been made public.”

So for £2,400, instead of providing a formal letter setting out the planning department’s official advice – which according to the council’s website is what they should expect if they paid the required fee – they settled for a note from themselves, produced after they had submitted the full application.

This self-drafted “advice” included “The proposal now achieves an appropriate setback along North Down [a neighbouring street] being increased to 3.5m… and creates a more transitional relationship with No1-3 North Down.”

The houses at Nos 1 and 3 North Down are in fact set back around nine metres from the street, and this very obvious non-conformity with the road’s established building line, would become one of several issues, one that has never been satisfactorily resolved.

According to their notes, the applicant’s team at that stage consisted of HTA Design, New Place Associates and Harp and Harp (the architects). Representing HTA Design at the meeting was Jan Slominski – the former Croydon planning officer who would, not long after, re-join the council’s planning team in a senior role.

So the writing was already on the wall for 158 Purley Downs Road.

The officer report to the planning committee on July 29, 2021, recommended approval for New Place’s proposed development at 158 Purley Downs Road.

Immediately after the council planning official’s presentation, Councillor Joy Prince asked for clarification. “Is there going to be level access from North Down on to the site?” the councillor asked.

Richard Freeman was the member of planning staff making the presentation that evening. Pointing to a site plan on screen, Freeman earnestly assured the committee, “Yeah, there is no need for steps and it would be step-free access and we attach a condition to secure that.”

Freeman must have forgotten that within one of the computer-generated images that had been submitted as part of the application, and shown at the committee just a few minutes earlier, was one picture showing two figures standing at the top of quite high steps leading to the front door of one of the new units.

So much for Freeman’s “step-free access” as a condition of planning consent, then.

Lynne Hale, the Sanderstead councillor, made a three-minute presentation to the committee on behalf of residents in her ward. “I have very serious concerns about the lack of information with respect to the land levels,” Hale said.

“Without these details, we have no way of checking the accuracy of the submitted drawings and can have no confidence that the relationship, between the development and the adjoining properties and roads, is as shown.

“This is important because it throws into doubt the claims about level access and compliance with disabled accessibility criteria.” All reasonable enough points to make.

But according to Freeman: “Levels. Yeah… This is something which we considered really carefully. We have conducted a site visit, we have made an assessment. We are satisfied that these street scene elevations clearly show you the relationship with the neighbouring properties and that you can take step-free access.”

It is worth noting that planning committees have a quasi-judicial status, where the expectation, especially on the council’s professional planning staff, is that the evidence provided is true, reliable and based on rigorously checked facts.

The street elevations are the drawings for 158 Purley Downs Road that were relied upon by the council to show that (a) the development’s relationship with neighbouring properties would be acceptable; and (b) that all the proposed properties would have “step-free access”.

As part of the deliberation that followed, Councillor Leila Ben-Hassel, the committee’s vice-chair at the time, expressed concern over the proposal’s disregard of the established building line in North Down, the lack of subservience of the rear block (Block B) and the total lack of landscaping detail. The councillor told the meeting that she was “on balance a bit 50-50”. She went on to suggest deferral of any decision.

But Freeman advised that the changes required to overcome the councillor’s concerns would mean that Block B “would need to be significantly redesigned” and that that was “not suitable for deferral”.

Freeman’s boss, Heather Cheesbrough, the council’s director of planning, was in attendance at the committee that night. She agreed with Freeman. This was too big a deal for deferral.

The application was still heading for a refusal by the committee until, at the suggestion of Chris Clark, the committee chair, the recommended planning conditions were amended, supposedly in order to overcome the concerns of Ben-Hassel and those of Councillor Humayun Kabir, who was worried about privacy and boundary treatments.

Freeman confirmed that the conditions to be added would be that “details of the finished land levels of both the proposed dwellings… and the levels of the amenity spaces and routes throughout the site are to be submitted for approval and the landscaping condition 13 gets amended to be a pre-occupation condition requiring details to be agreed.”

I had reminded both officers and councillors before the meeting of what it says about landscaping in the notes under London Plan Policy D4 (Delivering good design):

“The scrutiny of a proposed development’s design should cover its… landscaping (3.4.7).”

and

“Assessment of the design of large elements of a development, such as landscaping… should be undertaken as part of assessing the whole development and not deferred for consideration after planning permission has been granted (3.4.11).”

But Cheesbrough, who was exposed as lying about her qualifications in respect of landscaping, insisted that, “The items around boundary treatment and landscaping is something that can be easily dealt with by condition.”

It was obvious that those additional conditions would not address the concerns raised about the building line on North Down or the lack of subservience of Block B that had almost got the application refused.

When the vote was taken on the substantive motion to approve (with those “additional” conditions), Councillor Kabir was clearly not convinced and voted against. Councillor Ben-Hassel voted in favour, leading to a 5-5 tied vote. The application was approved on the casting vote of the chair, Chris Clark.

From that point, the power to make further decisions on related applications was back firmly in the hands of the planning officials, using their delegated authority.

The following day, Hale wrote to her residents, “I was concerned last night about the approach taken by one Labour councillor who was vocally very unhappy about significant elements of the scheme… all reasons for refusing the scheme – but still voted for it!

“Words fail me – and I’m so sorry for the local residents who will be adversely impacted by this decision.”

Nicola Townsend, the council’s chief planner, would sign the decision notice in February 2022. By this stage, Slominski was back working for Croydon Council.

One of the planning conditions attached to that permission requires that all of the houses must be “constructed and fitted out” to comply with “the Building Regulations requirements for M4(2) and/or M4(3) dwellings”. Those requirements include that access to all the houses is “step free”, or if ramps are necessary that they are designed to the specific standards set out in the regulations.

This had now become the responsibility of the council’s planners, to ensure that the regulations were properly complied with.

Only by ensuring that the development would fully comply with these regulations would the council ensure that it meets the relevant, adopted development plan policies (London Plan D7 and Local Plan SP2.8). And only by doing that could the council say that it had complied with its Public Sector Equality Duty, by giving all due consideration to how its decision(s) would affect people who are protected under the Equality Act 2010, which of course includes wheelchair users.

Even so, applications submitted since permission was granted (to discharge conditions) have included the same CGI, with the same figures, standing at the top of the steps beside the main entrance to the corner house.

Just who are these people trying to kid?

Then there’s that landscaping condition (13B), added because of the concerns of Councillors Ben-Hassel and Hale at the committee. Contrary to what Freeman said at committee, this still reads as a “compliance’ condition, rather than one that has to be discharged “pre-occupation”.

“The proposed landscaping and amenity spaces shall be fully implemented and provided in accordance with the details shown on dwg. 20.045.101D and, thereafter, retained and maintained for the life of the development.”

But to this day, with the builders on site, there are still no landscaping details shown on the approved application drawing. There is nothing to be assessed or enforced. No details whatsoever!

Ben-Hassel had told the committee “I do share … concerns with regards to not having a detailed landscaping plan. I think that’s quite important because it would mean whether or not we get a good finished product.”

There is more to come in this sad tale, of how the developer, with the “highly professional” assistance of council officials, manoeuvred around a petition, material objections and the Building Act 1984, to discharge pre-commencement planning conditions and make way for demolition.

Read more: Suspicions over secrecy surrounding Slominski’s return
Read more: Council in cover-up over planning’s husband and wife act
Read more: Director of planning’s bogus claim over Institute membership
Read more: Buyers beware: High Court judge puts planners in the dock

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