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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