CROYDON IN CRISIS: Council’s Bertie Wooster-like leader has got himself into a tangle over talks with an exclusive private members’ club over plans to develop a tract of protected public land.
EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
Mayor Jason Perry’s Conservative-run council held talks about potential disposal of public open land on Shirley Heath and Addington Hills to an exclusive private members’ club as long ago as last summer.
This contradicts official statements issued by Croydon Council’s tax-payer funded press office, which were swiftly endorsed by the increasingly Bertie Wooster-like figure of Mayor Perry, that tried to claim that there had been no such meetings with The Addington Golf Club.
The claim about the meetings was made in a letter, sent last night to Mayor Perry by Councillor Stuart King, the leader of the Labour opposition group at Croydon Town Hall.
“I have just discovered that the council held discussions with the golf club as long ago as last summer,” King wrote.
“Given the council’s only public statement to date wrongly dismissed these proposals as ‘rumours’, I am calling on you to publish information on all meetings, conversations or other communication, including email exchanges, the council has had with [The] Addington Golf Club or its representatives.
“It is only right that the council should be 100% transparent with residents on its relationship with these proposals.”
Inside Croydon first reported last week the land grab plans laid out in a glossy digital brochure distributed by The Addington GC. The Addington is part of a golf and sports business owned by multi-millionaire Ryan Noades, the son of the former Crystal Palace Football Club owner, Ron Noades.
The petition demands that Mayor Jason Perry “does not allow the club to build their facilities on our public land”.
“It is quite clear that the golf club just want to grab public land to build the driving range for the members of their private club,” conservationist and Green Party election candidates Peter Underwood told Inside Croydon.
Croydon Council and Noades at The Addington have refused to answer Inside Croydon’s questions about the proposals for a driving range on the precious heathland, and the plan to dig out a money-saving irrigation reservoir, intended to reduce the golf club’s spiralling water bills.
Seeking answers: Labour leader Stuart King
In his letter to Mayor Perry, King wrote, “According to the London Wildlife Trust these proposals could destroy a significant part of the delicate heathland ecosystem on Shirley Heath, which is registered as a Site of Importance for Nature Conservation.
“This is just one of many reasons why these proposals should not be supported.
“I am calling on you personally to publicly reject these plans and to provide a categorical assurance to residents that the council you lead will not lease, sell or act in any other way that would facilitate the loss of this heathland.”
Golfers will be very familiar with the expression “a bad lie”, and it appears that Mayor Perry has got himself into one over the discussions that officials, from planning and from the asset disposal departments of the cash-strapped council, have had with The Addington over Shirley Heath.
Bad lie: Perry has used the tax-payer-funded council press office to dissemble and deceive over the situation with Shirley Heath
On Friday, on its Your Croydon Twitter account (26,000 followers, so a large audience to fob off with half-baked excuses and lies), Croydon Council stated, “We’re aware of rumours about Addington Golf Club and plans to turn Shirley Heath into a driving range. We’d just like to clarify we do not, and have not ever had, any intention to sell this land. It’s Green Belt land and subject to the most stringent planning policy protection.”
Significantly, the council’s statement did not rule out the possibility of, for example, leasing the land to the millionaire-owned golf club.
The council reached the depths of dissembling a little later when Jason Cummings, Mayor Perry’s council cabinet member for finance and ward councillor for the area, tweeted, “The club has not made a formal request to the council about this and as such we have nothing to formally respond to.”
Note the use of the weasel words: “formal request“, which again does not eliminate the possibility of less formal talks, or even using the council’s pre-application planning process.
Cummings is the former manager of the Pick ‘n Mix at Woollies who rose to the dizzy heights of SPAD-dom in Downing Street when Theresa May was Prime Minister. So he ought to know something about the dark arts of political half-truths.
Because inadvertently or not, Cummings managed to contradict the council’s own messaging by confirming that some approach has indeed been made by The Addington Golf Club to cash-strapped Croydon Council.
“Was the council aware of the club’s aspiration? Yes, of course,” Cummings admitted, dashing the council’s claim that this was all just “rumours”, as endorsed by Mayor Perry.
It could assist piss-poor Perry’s efforts to try to reclaim some of his rapidly dwindling credibility if he was to come clean about his golf club memberships, and any gifts or hospitality he has received from The Addington or Noades’s other golf clubs.
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Pity Stuart King didn’t seem bothered about the fate of the Croydon Park Hotel…
The Addington Golf Club Ltd show exactly £250 in cash/ bank for the last two years accounts. Can this be correct? They made a loss of £400K to y/e April and have considerable borrowings. If I were them I’d be looking very closely at ways to improve my finances/offer without paying too much up front – a lease/rent arrangement rather than a purchase springs to mind.
The main business account for Noades is Altonwood, David. All his golf clubs are subsidiaries of this umbrella, although he also has directorships of a number of over property and development businesses.
Nothing would surprise me. The Conservative Party is now just a lie machine, with its minions in Matthew Parker Street desperately trying to hoodwink voters with whatever misinformation and disinformation their backers in Tufton Street and rubbish like Lynton Crosby feed them.
The latest is Susan Hall’s lie that Sadiq Khan is planning to introduce Pay per Mile for drivers in London. A sensible idea, and one actively considered 4 years ago by some bloke by the name of Rishi Sunak. Whatever happened to him?
If she’ll lie to get elected, think what she’d do in office
So the denial provided by Cummings and Perry relies on the use of the word “formal” in the approaches made by the Golf Club. As with the Purley Town Centre development it appears an “informal” approach is always important in dealing with the Mayoral administration and the first staging post in gaining approval for controversial proposals that really only serve the interests of the proposer than any real public interest that is supposed to be represented by the Mayoral administration. Again with Purley the informal part of all this is the most important part of the process since we never know what informal incentives are provided to facilitate these important first steps to push the Council into backing schemes that do not serve the wider public interest. In a word. The way Perry and Cummings work “stinks”.