Sleight of hand: Polaska BVI and Mayor Perry want the public to focus on the new pool (est cost? Less than £15m) while barely mentioning the £100m-worth of 245 flats they want to build
The Save Purley Pool campaign is asking its supporters to use the latest public consultation to discover more, and ensure the council provides the information, about the secretive, British Virgin Islands-registered development firm behind proposals for another 245 flats in Purley town centre.
Croydon’s Tory Mayor, Jason Perry, and Chris Philp, the Conservative MP for Croydon South, have refused to answer straightforward questions about the identity of the directors behind shadowy Polaska Assets BVI, the ultimate owners of the long-term lease for the site of Purley’s multi-storey car park, former supermarket and closed-down leisure centre.
The property company wants to redevelop the site into a money-spinning, £100million set of flats for a retirement community. And to get out of providing any “affordable” homes, as planning rules usually require, Polaska have fobbed off Perry and Philp with the offer of providing a new pool and leisure centre.
The development looks likely to be a massive tax dodge, as by being registered off-shore in the Caribbean, Polaska Assets not only get to keep the identity of their owners secret, they also avoid paying significant amounts of tax to HMRC.
There has been a similarly-named company registered in Britain in August 2022, with the sole director Paul Andrews. But this appears to be a shell company, and has no track record or assets listed that suggest that it has the capacity for such a major development.
‘Good’ development: the developers have used the offer of a leisure centre to disguise their plan for hundreds of flats in a skyscraper
It is this kind of important detail that Richard Willmer has expressed some interest about in the latest round-robin email to supporters of the Save Purley Pool campaign.
“We believe it is important for the council to hold the developers properly to account for delivery of the new centre, and that [the developers] have the finances and technical capability to deliver,” Willmer wrote yesterday.
Amended plans for the proposed development are open for comments to the developers until December 17. There is likely to be a statutory, 13-week consultation next year.
“The main interest of Save Purley Pool is ensuring a six-lane 25-metre pool for the centre of Purley,” Willmer wrote, “and encouragingly this is still in the plans, and would be scheduled to be built first, thus minimising the risk that it would be dropped once work was underway.
“We also hope the proposals for the whole site will provide the widest possible benefit to the centre of Purley. We will continue to be involved in the meetings and express these views.”
The developers’ consultation can be found at purleypool.co.uk.
Read more: Council backs Purley Pool tax dodge by off-shore company
Read more: Tories warn residents: don’t dare complain about Purley pool
Read more: Residents backlash over Perry’s 200-flat scheme at Purley pool
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Concerned on the affect of at least another 245 car going through Purley (assuming each flat just has one car – but is that likely).
Unreal , purley has gone down hill over the last 15years there isn’t a lot here anymore!!!! Come and see purley live here work here then comment!!!!
We are desperate for a new pool Gym ect and more investment in purley !
I remember when purley was amazing lots of young families wanted to live here and visit the high street surely new families should be given the same opportunities a new pool would generate more people and places to come to , the local school also used the old pool so I’m sure they would love to use the new one !
As for the new 245 flats coming look all around the bloody place is full of new flats and houses so a few 245 more will not make any difference.
I for one are very happy and looking forward to the new improvements for purley!
As I say if you don’t live or you don’t work or use the high street on a regular basis please don’t just moan about improving purley !
The campaigners are very wise to be worried about a developer who has no track record and only qualification seems to be their proximity to the South Croydon Tory Party. Clearly they are only interested in approval for their planning application and do not look beyond this. Once approved by the client regime who knows how it will be vired or suspended for development till it suits whoever ends up in charge of it.
Just look at the Whitgift Centre. Purley centre too is now starting to resemble the hollowed out blight of Central Croydon.
I cant comment much on the owners of the company but i can comment on the designs that are being communicated – the drawings and visuals are shit – badly drawn – no sense of place or context or scale or materiality, obscure graphics, not clear concept or clarity of idea – someone is saving money in not employing a decent architect – i hope the council wake up to this, and its fancy new design review panel whom nobody knows who’s on it – none of this is looking good and that means Croydon residents are on a journey to a poorly designed, under-funded, undersized public offer – whilst the Mayor, politicians and councilors and planning officers stand by utterly clueless. You’ve read it here first.
One of the most opportunistic, money grabbing business models out their is mid to high end residential care homes – they charge occupants an eye watering £4.5- £7k per month. They have a captive audience – old folk sell their homes to pay for the extortionate fees (£50 -£70k per year!), families of the elderly folk have no choice, the care homes turn the heating up and serve pre-cooked frozen food to its elderly occupants.
Half this development constitutes highly profitable care home facilities which does zero to address the need for family housing in the borough. Its just a very highly profitable business for the developer which does very little to generate a mixed, balanced development.
What is our flaming Mayor doing? He better be scrutinizing this carefully.
From what I see, the wool is being pulled over the eyes of Croydon Residents. This development does not stack up as a piece of holistic balanced planning that will contribute to Purley long term. Its just one huge and very profitable residential care home.
I note in the proposals there is a 6m fall across the site, North-South with loads of steps and no ramps for people with impaired mobility. This is all a bit bollocks – were you to draw the correct ramped access according to the Building Regulations, you can kiss goodbye to much of the public square. Its a bad omen that the developer is already misleading the public on such fundamental access issues.
220 residential care units and not a accessible ramp in site – who are they kidding?
We used to own Purley Pool.
Three years ago the late Badsha Quadir, the then Conservative councillor for Selsdon Vale and Forestdale, made a speech to Croydon’s Labour council leaders, asking them “will you shut down the pool and sell it off to pernicious, hovering developers?”
Now what’s happening is that a closed pool and its land has been given on a plate to “pernicious, hovering developers” who don’t believe in paying their taxes to us. We’re being ripped off twice.
Philp, Perry, Polaska and the Purley Tories are hoping that people will be dim enough to be dazzled by the bribery of a new swimming pool to not question the whole dodgy deal. It all makes the Conservatives’ justified complaints about Brick by Brick and the Fairfield Halls refurbishment ring a bit hollow now