By JOHNNY DOBBYN, housing writer
Easy conversion: family homes can be split into flats more easily under Tory Chancellor’s changes
The campaign against flat developments in the south of the borough that has been led by Tories Chris Philp and Jason Perry has been dealt a severe blow by… the Conservative Chancellor’s Autumn Statement.
Buried deep in Jeremy Hunt’s announcement to the Commons this week was the news that, from next year, he intends to allow family homes to be converted into flats without the need for anything so troublesome as planning permission. It is, effectively, a flat-builders’ free pass.
Under permitted development rules, everyone has been allowed to replace windows or build a single-storey extension in their own home without having to seek permission from the council. Hunt now intends to “streamline the system through a new Permitted Development Right… for subdividing houses into two flats without changing the façade”.
It’s a move that will result in the destruction of suburban family homes that Philp, the MP for Croydon South, and Perry, Croydon’s part-time Mayor, have said that they are utterly opposed to.
The idea for this kind of sub-division of houses was first floated by The Intergenerational Foundation in 2016, which described it as an opportunity for older people to “downsize in situ”. Two of the three case studies featured in its white paper Unlocking England’s ‘Hidden Homes’ were in, you guessed it, Croydon.
Out of the loop: MP Philp’s message on Monday. From Wednesday, it was Tory policy to not even insist that house conversions into flats had to be considered by council planners, so ‘destroying family homes and changing the green nature of many neighbourhoods’
Hunt had plainly not consulted with his Croydon parliamentary colleague over what he was going to announce, as only on Monday of this week, Philp was emailing constituents about his and Perry’s “success” in stopping flatted schemes.
“Under Croydon’s new… approach to planning, applications to destroy family homes are now almost always rejected,” Philp was boasting.
“We should not be destroying much-needed family homes… Flats, including in very high blocks, are better suited to Croydon town centre and more central London areas, which is where many blocks of flats are being built at the moment,” Philp wrote, apparently blissfully unaware of the planning bomb Chancellor Hunt was just about to drop on him, Perry and the rest of the country.
Obviously, these very high blocks with hundreds of flats are only “better suited to Croydon town centre” when they’re not being developed in Purley by a shadowy offshore tax-avoidance business based in the British Virgin Islands, or when there’s a promise of a swimming pool refurbishment in the mix, and when they are enthusiastically supported by Perry and Philp.
If Hunt’s proposal is implemented, not only will Perry’s planning committee members not be able to stop the destruction of family homes by being converted into flats, but Croydon Council will also miss out on “planning obligations”, such as the payment of Community Infrastructure Levy, which they would usually receive when a house is demolished and replaced with flats.
Flat-footed: Mayor Perry has broken his promise on Purley Pool. Now he won’t answer questions about the flat developers or the Chancellor’s new scheme
CIL is designed to offset any harm caused by a development to a locality, such as increased pressure on school places and parking. In reality, CIL has become a developers’ bung to local authorities. Councils like Croydon often give the green light to developments but then never spend the CIL cash where it was intended for.
One of the frequent objections to development by residents’ associations based in and around Purley has been that CIL monies raised are never spent in Purley.
Now, thanks to Chancellor Hunt, there won’t be any CIL money at all from the family homes lost to flats.
Some property industry commentators have said that Hunt’s move risks placing more pressure on parking, schools and transport infrastructure, where the number of residents in a street could potentially double – and all outside local authority control or in contradiction of local planning policies.
Philp and Perry might get lucky because Hunt’s scheme is unlikely to appeal to many of the profit-hungry development firms that have plagued the borough in recent years as the Gross Development Value (ie. what they’d both be worth) of two flats converted out of a family home might not cover the Open Market Value of the donor house and the conversion costs.
Where the scheme will find fans is among those who will seek to convert their own houses, keeping a flat for themselves and releasing the other to the market.
Inside Croydon approached MP Philp and Mayor Perry and the council for a reaction to their Government’s intention to permit the destruction of family homes by replacing them with flats. And just like when we asked them to name the directors of the firm that they want to allow to build 245 flats in Purley town centre, there was no answer.
Read more: Council backs Purley Pool tax dodge by off-shore company
Read more: ‘Teetering on the edge’: Hunt does nothing for local councils
Read more: Tories warn residents: don’t dare complain about Purley pool
Read more: Millionaire pulls plug on Mayor Perry’s ‘big idea’ for Allders
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ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for a SIXTH successive year in 2022 in the annual round-up of civic cock-ups in Private Eye magazine
Heather Cheesborough and her obedient planning operatives will still find a way to demolish family homes and help their developer mates to build more empty, ugly, tower blocks. The whole borough will be one big concrete jungle.
Two of the Mayoral candidates in 2022 pledged to show Cheesbrough the door.
Perry wasn’t one of them.
I don’t condone the planning relaxation, but it’s a bit rich to equate new ‘tower blocks’ with ‘destruction of suburban family homes’ as you put it.
Heather Cheesbrough is not demolishing “family homes”, nor are the other Croydon council planning staff.
The people knocking down big houses for the rich and building flats for the not so rich are the property developers. They buy land from people who probably voted Conservative all their lives, and now want to cash in and move on. That or their orphaned kids are maximising their inheritance.
If the Tories wanted to stop this, they could have done it anytime over the last 13 years they’ve been in government. Instead they’ve gone the other way, just weeks after their last Home Secretary said the reason there were homeless people living in tents was because of “lifestyle choice”.
All the planners are doing is applying the policies set by the politicians, whether that be Croydon council under Labour or the Conservative government.
That sounds great but has a bit of a credibility issue when you come to the London road and surrounding wards.
See they are Labour areas and have Labour Councillors supporting the building of those flats. The buildings are owned or are sold by labour voters to other Labour voters or self developed and then let back as social housing to this Council. All pay the CIL and none of it is ploughed back into the infrastructure at all.
Not one Councillor acted when wrongdoing was brought to their attention. Can they actually do anything? Were they compromised? Had they already been contacted by the developer beforehand?
Seriously that would be crediting them with influence way beyond reality in the first place. A bit like asking them to fix a parking fine – not a cats chance!
No Arfur it is not a political thing – its Planning laws, building regulations and codesunfit for modern purpose. Its a Council with no means to prevent wrongdoing let alone an ability and resource to actually prosecute anyone for doing so.
That is the cover up. Planning conditions and codes are treated like they are voluntary within the borough.
Developers treat them like we treat leaflets.
Something to be taken and dropped in the nearest skip!
But it also is disreputable behaviour of a public body intentionally misleading the general public that it is competent and open and capable.
It is the failure to be fully open and accountable about how it is socially engineering areas to meet housing targets and ignoring those resident in those areas. That is an area Councillors would be culpable for.
Frankly pure and unadulterated dissembling is the order of the day to residents of Croydon
So many avoided FOI’s, sitting on reports, judicial reviews, and court cases can’t be wrong.
(To paraphrase flies and shit)
Time to wake up and smell the coffee in time for the next election and to get a more people centred set of elected representatives.
Fair point, but ‘Part-time Perry’s’ ne planning guidance – forget the exact tortuous term – seems to have slowed the demolition of family homes. And, is it fair to sneer at ‘people who have (probably) voted Conservative all their lives’? I’m guessing 99% of IC’s right-thinking readers (probably) voted the other way.
The hollowness of Croydon South Tories bitterly protesting against development in their area is again demonstrated by this piece of botched legislation. (Gawd only knows the quality of these conversions when they see the light of day). The ludicrousness of Philp’s position is always revealed by the fact that he is a Minister in the Government that has created this state of endless flats to maximise developers profits.
The likes of Cheesborough exist to implement his Central Government policies.
Philp’s company makes its income out of lending to property developers. Will this latest central Government direction to develop explicitly outside of brownfield sites stop the ridiculous illusion that local authorities are the underlying cause of what is happening. You don’t have to guess that the Croydon South nimbies will continue with their fantasy and ignore reality.
There is clearly a massive difference between allowing a house to be divided in two without changing the facadelp and knocking the house down to build nine flats. The latter radically changes the character of areas in a way that internal changes do not. However both will increase the population density so perhaps a concentration on improving struggling public sector support services might be a good plan.
It might not change the character of an area (too much), yet it is the loss of family homes that is the point.
The (national) housing development focus for however-many years has been on the number of dwellings, rather than on the types, delivered; hence an emphasis on flats (in urban and suburban areas).
But the preponderance of flats is less the issue than the configuration.
We have a glut of one- and two-bedroom flats, and a shortage of three- and four-bedroom dwellings for families, whether flats or houses.
(To help counter this, Croyodn now requires 30% of dwellings in any given development to have three bedrooms, yet a 1:2 ratio to one- and two-bedroom units continues to add to the glut and worsen the shortage.)
The measure in question, if it comes to pass, will see innumerable three- and four-bedroom houses converted into one- and two-bedroom flats.
And while the nett number of dwellings will go up (yay: boxes ticked and more targets met), the number of family homes will go down and that is the real problem.
Or planning permissionfor a three bedroom flat suddenly becomes a 4 bedroom flat when built by the developer by altering the plans breaking planning regs etc (but still classed as a perfectly legal development by Ms Townsend)
You are ight though it is more profitable to have the 1 and 2 bedrooms or in the same space for a three bedroom make it a four obtain higher rental from letting it back to the council.
That is what developers pay into the Community Infrastructure levy for.
It is not a lot depending on the scale but is still 5 figures and I can find no evidence that it has been used by Croydon to improve the impact of said developments – ever.