Residents who complain about development are frequently dismissed as “NIMBYS” – Not In My Back Yard. But residents in a council estate in Selhurst have expressed justifiable concerns about plans for a massive telephone mast, half the height of Nelson’s Column, which a commercial developer wants to plonk right in their backyards.
Towering presence: documents submitted to Croydon Council show how the mast will dwarf neighbouring homes
The proposed tower, “Totally dwarfs the flats next to where they want to build it and uses up valuable green space used by both residents and inhabited by wildlife,” a concerned resident has told Inside Croydon.
They claim that, because of the current rules of the planning system, many neighbouring properties are unaware of the proposals, as only Roden Garden residents have received letters from Croydon Council.
But from the diagrams submitted, “As you can see, it will have an overbearing impact on the whole locality,” according to the resident.
“Many of the residents of Roden Gardens are vulnerable and some are not able to access the consultation documents due to language barriers,” they say.
Residents have until June 3 to lodge any objections to the mast, which would serve the O2 and Vodaphone networks.
The planning application has been submitted on the assumption that the mast represents “permitted development”, suggesting that the developers do not consider that they even need to be granted planning permission.
A previous planning application to increase the height of masts at Tait Road by another 27 feet was rejected by the council’s planning department. “It is the council’s view that the proposed mast does not constitute permitted development,” they wrote, because the mast’s height would exceed 20metres from the ground.
Tait Road is the other side of the railway tracks from Roden Gardens.
“The council must reject the Roden Gardens application for the same reason,” the residents say.
The planning application states that “The proposed installation would replace the two Vodafone and VMO2 ground based towers at Tait Road Industrial Estate that need to be removed to facilitate the redevelopment of this area as part of the railway improvement programme planned at Selhurst Triangle by Network Rail.”
Yet Network Rail admitted last year that, because it has not been allocated any funding by the Department for Transport, it is not proceeding with “CARS” – the Croydon Area Remodelling Scheme, intended to unblock the rail bottleneck at Selhurst.
Industrial scale: the open space at the back of Roden Gardens would be completely taken over by the mast development
“In the absence of any plans to progress the railway improvement programme, the planning application should be rejected. There are no public plans to demolish the existing towers at Tait Road Industrial Estate.”
That’s not the only detail that the applicants appear to have got badly wrong. “The supporting documents do not state that the company have considered existing tall structures for siting the mobile phone mast, there is no attempt to camouflage the structure and there is no evidence provided of the need for this mast to be sited here,” the residents state.
“There are significant amounts of land owned by Network Rail, already industrial, that could be utilised if it is really necessary to build such a huge new structure to expand the mobile network in this area.”
And the residents tell Inside Croydon: “By speaking to residents on Roden Gardens and in neighbouring roads we are getting significant amounts of community support for objecting to this ill-thought-through and inappropriate planning request.”
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