The almighty row in Coulsdon over a long-promised medical centre has seen the local Tories panicked into issuing multiple press releases to stake claim to some kind of “victory”, after the Tory-led council broke its promises to residents by putting the proposed site on the open market with a £1.8million total price tag.
Sold: the old CALAT centre, now an NHS dialysis centre, has been bought by an investor. The adjoining car park can now be developed as a medical centre
Residents’ association officials told Croydon South MP Chris Philp and local Conservatives that they had “been shafted again”, when the property ads appeared, placed by the cash-strapped council’s estate agents, Stile Harold Williams.
Within a couple of days of the bids’ deadline, Croydon Conservatives and Philp were issuing statements stating that the NHS had been the successful bidders for the site.
This despite there having been no formal statement from the council.
Coulsdon’s Tory councillors then provoked more anger by trying to explain away the sale offer by blaming the very residents they are supposed to represent, claiming that they had some how delayed the property transfer and development process.
The old CALAT centre, on the site of what was once Smitham School, plus the adjacent car park appeared on the proplist.com property sales website at the end of last month, with a deadline for offers of February 27.
Yet just days before, Tory councillor Mario Creatura had told a meeting of a Coulsdon residents’ association that the sites would not be sold as part of the cash-strapped council’s sale of assets.
‘Underhand’: Creatura attended the ECRA meeting, but never mentioned the imminent sale ads for the CALAT site and car park
Creatura and his Tory chums have hardly covered themselves in glory over this episode. After the property ad appeared, Creatura was forced to back-pedal furiously: “The council is legally required to demonstrate best value for the site,” the councillor wrote on social media. “The easiest way to do that is to test the market.”
Creatura offered no explanation for why he failed to mention any of this in his RA meeting just days earlier.
“It’s all very underhand,” was the considered view of one disgruntled Coulsdon resident.
Creatura has been repeatedly challenged over what he did, or did not, know when he attended last month’s East Coulsdon Residents’ Association meeting. Creatura has refused to provide any answers.
On Friday – barely 48 hours after the deadline for bids and before the council had made any announcement itself – Croydon Conservatives issued a press statement, including quotes from Jason Perry, the Tory Mayor of Croydon.
“A short while ago, the council advertised the site on the open market – a legal requirement to ensure the Council’s financial duties were met,” read the Tory attempt to re-adjust, if not rewrite, history.
“The NHS was kept informed throughout, and was able to place its bid for the site.
“The deadline for bids has since passed and we are pleased to announce that council officers [they mean council staff] will now progress Heads of Terms and contract exchange with the NHS.
“This acquisition of the land by the NHS represents a major step forward for the medical centre, and the NHS will now work up a planning application for the new medical centre which will be submitted to Croydon Council in the usual way.”
As well as the medical centre on the car park site next to Malcolm Road, the NHS is to continue to hold a 25-year lease on the adapted CALAT building for a dialysis centre. The council, Inside Croydon understands, has sold this site to a property investor, who should be bound by the lease.
Coulsdon’s four residents’ associations have been lobbying the NHS and the council for a medical centre for at least eight years, arguing that the area’s older residents, and rapidly growing population – with housing developments at Cane Hill and the still-vacant Lion Green Lane scheme – made the need for up-to-date facilities a priority.
All the best-laid plans have looked to unravel – when Brick by Brick was running the council’s development show – or come to a complete halt because of covid and then Liz Truss’s disastrous premiership.
The damage to NHS finances caused by the brief imposition of Trussonomics is something that Coulsdon’s Tory councillors seem to have (conveniently) forgotten, but it was why progress on the medical centre came to a grinding halt in 2022.
To his credit, Philp had been busy lobbying ministerial colleagues at the Department for Health to unblock the log-jam and free-up money for the Coulsdon centre that had been earmarked in NHS budgets for several years.
Like the Tory councillors, Philp, too, was privy to “insider information” last Friday, issued a late-night “newsflash”.
“I have just received some fantastic news that I wanted to pass on right away,” Philp gushed.
“The council marketed the car park site at the former CALAT centre off Malcom Road, Coulsdon, as it was obliged to do, and has now received bids and made a decision.” We know: this is stretching credulity to unknown levels – Croydon Council making a decision inside 48 hours…
‘Fantastic news’: Tory MP Chris Philp
“I am delighted to say that the local NHS bid has won! This means that the much-needed new GP and medical centre is set to go ahead, once the final NHS approvals are obtained.” Quite reasonably, as Philp sought to hand credit for the completion of the deal to every Conservative councillor that had ever visited Coulsdon, he also thanked Croydon NHS CEO Matthew Kershaw for his persistence with the project.
Yet not content with the NHS getting them off the hook, Coulsdon Tories then took to social media to try to smear the residents’ association by claiming that they had caused delays to the scheme.
On social media, the “Coulsdon Town Councillors”, which could be veteran Ian Parker, Luke Shortland or Creatura, wrote to residents that, “It could have happened sooner. Some were unhappy with earlier plans just as the dotted line was about to be signed. But we’re getting there…”.
Residents were, again, and not unreasonably, furious with their elected representatives.
“That is blatantly untrue,” one replied. The resident then explained, to the hard-of-thinking councillors, that a previous planning proposal drew objections because, unusually for a health centre, it had no drop-off or pick-up point for ambulances and private vehicles – potentially leaving patients having to traipse 50 yards to enter the health centre.
Blame game: have Coulsdon’s Tory councillors never heard of Liz Truss?
“We spoke to Matthew Kershaw of the NHS saying some councillors were blaming us and he clearly stated this was not the case.
“Please retract that statement.”
So far, from the blaming and shaming Croydon Town councillors, there’s been silence.
And Creatura hasn’t said anything, yet, about whether he lied to the ECRA meeting or really just didn’t have a clue about how the council is being run.
It is probably the case that they still have the words of Maureen Levy, the secretary of ECRA, ringing in their ears: “You – and the Conservatives – will never be forgiven if the promised health centre does not materialise.”
Read more: Coulsdon ‘shafted’ by Tories as NHS centre site put up for sale
Read more: Long-planned Coulsdon medical centre in ‘critical condition’
Read more: ‘Disgrace’ as £110m of Brick by Brick homes stand empty
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
As featured on Google News Showcase
- Our comments section on every report provides all readers with an immediate “right of reply” on all our content. Our comments policy can be read by clicking here
Inside Croydon is a member of the Independent Community News Network
- Inside Croydon works together with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, as well as BBC London News and ITV London
ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2024, Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for a SEVENTH successive year in the annual round-up of civic cock-ups in Private Eye magazine
This just goes to show neither the dodgy council nor the cunning Tories can be trusted no matter how convincing they might seem. The sooner we all acknowledge this the better. “Shafted” is exactly the right word for the situation.
I’d like to think we’re not being “shafted” by them on the libraries but I’m far from convinced. It would be great if they weren’t closed down or sold but I think we all know better. Please someone convince me otherwise.