Residents and councillors in Addiscombe and East Croydon are furious that property owners have sneaked in a planning application to demolish a long-disused pub and build an eight-storey block of flats in its place.
Campaigning: locals and councillors when the campaign’s company was not dormant and the ACV was in place
The Save The Glamorgan Campaign has brought together residents living on or near Cherry Orchard Road with the aim of taking on the once popular old boozer, which closed in 2016.
A previous planning application in 2021 (for a 10-storey block of flats) and attempt by the owners to auction the property were thwarted by interventions by Croydon Council because the pub had been granted the status of an Asset of Community Value.
As a consequence of ACV status, the owners, Hounslow-based developers Butlers Walsall, had to give a residents’ campaign group first refusal on purchasing the 180-year-old building.
The Campaign’s efforts to raise the necessary money to buy the building from Butlers Walsall were ultimately unsuccessful, with the ACV lapsing after five years. The campaigners blame the building’s owners for failing to “engage with the local community” and setting “an unrealistically high price of over £2million”.
They also claim that the building has suffered significant damage due to squatters “who have occupied the building for over five years, seemingly with the owners’ permission”.
The owners have now returned with a revised scheme which seeks to work around planning rules that prevent the demolition of heritage pub buildings by including in the scheme a very small space supposedly to serve as a pub.
The Save The Glamorgan Campaign today issued a strongly-worded condemnation of the building’s owners.
“Butler Wallsall Limited is obliged to consult the local community over major planning applicants like this,” said the Campaign’s chair, Ron Appleby.
“Their failure to engage with our group shows their lack of respect for the Addiscombe and East Croydon communities. As a campaign group, we have always been willing to engage with the developers, and it is disappointing that they have submitted a new application without talking to us and the community first.”
Towering proposal: the plan for the Glamorgan site, at eight storeys, is actually less tall than most of the recently built blocks on Cherry Orchard Road
The revised planning application would build 24 flats (the 2019 application was for 36 flats) along a stretch of road to the east of the main London to Brighton railway, where over the past decade there have been hundreds more flats built in blocks.
The Glamorgan’s owners withdrew their previous application in 2021 following concerns raised by the Mayor of London over the lack of affordable housing.
The Save The Glamorgan campaign’s Community Interest Company, Glamorgan Phoenix Ltd still exists, although dormant. One of the three directors of Glamorgan Phoenix Ltd is Rodger Molyneux, who in 2010 was among a group of Carshalton residents who helped save their local, The Hope, from doom and destruction and turned the venue round to become a multi-award-winning Pub of the Year.
Among the objections raised against the latest planning application by the Save The Glamorgan Campaign group are “no evidence provided to support the demolition of the current building”; “lack of submitted drawings and information concerning the public house”; “excessive height of the building to the adjacent terrace properties on Cross Road and Cherry Orchard Road”; “lack of submitted drawings of sufficient detail to demonstrate good quality architecture, layout and landscaping”; and (especially considering the Mayor of London’s reasons for refusal in 2021) “the Application is missing an affordable housing strategy”.
The Save The Glamorgan Campaign is publicly supported by councillors for Addiscombe West ward who include Clive “Thirsty” Fraser, a well-known enthusiast for pub culture, and a member of the Croydon Council planning committee.
Read more: Campaign group prepares to battle for Glamorgan’s future
Read more: Glamorgan pub plan shows it is asset of community value
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Time to slap another ACV on this!
Classic developer tactic of wearing down public opposition by dragging it on for years and letting the building fall into ruin. We face losing another community asset just to put more money in some developer’s pocket.
I would say that our Council should step in to stop this disgraceful behaviour, but they are using the same tactics to close down and sell off our libraries.
as if there arent enough tower blocks of rabbit hutches there already.
What’s so special about this pub? There’s another one literally across the street and three other ones in 5 minutes walking distance.
What’s the betting there will be a ‘mysterious fire’ if the developers don’t get their way…
That group needs to be very astute to that so anyone playing that game gets caught.
Hang on – this is a pub that’s been derelict for years and all of a sudden residents and councillors are ‘furious’ that it’s going to be demolished? No one wanted it then and now they’re upset? Get a life. And, as for our Green hopeful, mixing up pubs and publicly owned buildings smacks of desperation. The pub closed because no one wanted it – move on everyone.
The pub closed when its licensees opted to emigrate. It had, under their careful management, been a thriving and successful business.
The property owners never managed to find a replacement landlord/landlady. Maybe they didn’t try too hard. After all, £12million – the estimated retail value for flats sold under their initial plans – is a better return than they might expect from years of rents from a busy pub.
The Campaign to save The Glamorgan was set up soon after the closure, in the reasonable belief that there might be a viable business for using the building for its designed purpose, that it is important to keep some of the area’s built heritage, and that the immediate area is already over-supplied with £300,000-a-time “luxury executive apartments”.
So you are wrong on all counts, Chris.
I do find the constant references to the importance of keeping some of the areas built heritage a bit of a stretch.
Had the pub retained its original features, most of which are long gone (changes in the 90s/00s rendering what exists now a bland shell of its former self) then this campaign would have been more successful.
In fact, just down the road sits the Leslie Arms, which despite similar neglect still retains the majority of its heritage features and as such is listed. And should rightly be preserved and fought for. Had the Horse and Groom architecture still remained its likely it too would also be listed. If you compare it then and now it’s a disgrace to see how much it has been altered. That is the real crime.
I hate to say it but the ACV came and went with no success, and it seems to be a case of emotion now rather than rationality or objectivity. Us vs the developers, irrespective of what actually might be best for the site. The community has had a right go but ultimately the game is now up.
The facts are that no one is ever going to choose to not only buy the site but shell out hundreds of thousands of pounds to restore it – the cost benefit simply doesn’t add up. There is no sound financial plan where the building is retained.
The only way to improve what’s now an even worse eyesore than it was when the first demolition was mooted in 17, is to develop the site.
I’m not saying I support the new plans – they’d need to be of significant architectural quality rather than yet another soulless block, but I am saying that any continuing resistance to the site being developed is emotional folly.
Further delaying development of the site is now verging on cutting your nose off to spite your face – keep this up and it will be derelict for another decade. And for what, exactly?
Push for a high quality development – unfortunately redevelopment is the only viable outcome.