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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