CROYDON IN CRISIS: Architecture and heritage campaigners have expressed concerns over plans to turn 24-storey No1 Croydon at East Croydon from office use to residential – and the local council won’t do anything about it. EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
Landmark: the 20th Century Society has already tried to get listed building status for the Richard Seifert-designed No1 Croydon before
The owners of No1 Croydon, the “50p Building” next to East Croydon Station, want to turn it from office space and convert it to 250 flats.
The application has been submitted to Croydon Council under permitted development rights, “PDs”, which allows developers carte blanche for office-to-resi conversions, and has seen Croydon town centre crammed with thousands of often cramped flats with variable standards of amenity.
It is reckoned that there are already around 1,000 flats in converted office blocks in Croydon town centre, following relaxation of planning rules by the Tories in 2011.
As a result, there was a block placed on all additional PDs in Croydon town centre by the then Labour-run council in 2014, but this has now expired, and the Labour government’s planning advice leans against such blanket bans.
PDs are cheap to do and generate decent profits – which is why dodgy developers like them so much. “The slums of the future” was how these office-to-flats conversions, carried out with minimal intrusion from local authority planning departments, were described by one of Sadiq Khan’s previous deputy mayors for housing.
Demand for office space, especially in the 1960s-built blocks in and around Croydon, was already in decline 15 years before anyone had heard of “covid” and “working from home”. No1 Croydon is a nationally recognised significant piece of 1960s architecture, but it has had a semi-permanent hoarding outside the building for some time, offering office space for rent.
According to one locally based estate agent, office space in No1 Croydon is available from £22.50 per sqft in areas ranging from a 782 sqft “suite”, to an entire floor of 7,811 sqft.
Bit of a squeeze: the building’s owners think that they can get 12 flats on to many of the building’s floors
This one estate agent lists part of the 19th floor and half of the 2nd floor as being currently available for rent, while the whole of the 8th (“fully refurbished”) and 18th floors are available. That may not be an exhaustive listing of the vacant space in the building, but represents at least 12% of the building being empty, earning no rents.
The building last underwent a top-to-bottom refurbishment in 2007, and it may be that the owners, Britel Fund Trustees Ltd, have done their sums and reckon that now is the time to get out of the office landlord business, at least as far as this Croydon landmark is concerned.
The proposal for conversions to flats has rung alarm bells at the 20th Century Society, though their previous efforts to obtain some planning protection for the building failed.
English Heritage advised in 2013 that the office building did not meet the criteria for Grade II listing on architecture and planning grounds.
But a year later, Croydon Council managed to undermine the building’s architecural “integrity” when they granted planning permission for a supermarket chain to build a shed alongside No1 Croydon for one of their “express” stores.
What was originally called the NLA building was built in 1968 by Siefert and Partners. The C20 Society have described it as architect Richard Seifert’s “best remaining examples of sculptural concrete in the UK”.
Completed in 1970, it was part of the transformation of Croydon town centre from provincial market town into a skyscraper and dual carriageway-dominated satellite business district of the capital.
Old and new: the then NLA Tower did appear incongruous when built in 1969-1970. The woman who owned the next door house refused to move to make way its demolition
The building has 24 storeys (269 feet high), plus two basement levels for car parking. NLA stood for Noble Lowndes Annuities, the New Zealand-based insurance firm that commissioned the building.
The formal application notice has now been strapped to lamposts in East Croydon, stating: “Change of use from offices (Use Class E) to residential (Use Class C3) to create 250 self-contained flats under Schedule 2, Part 3, Class MA of the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015 (as amended) | One Croydon (Formerly NLA Tower) 12 -18 Addiscombe Road Croydon CR0 0XT”.
The application to Croydon Council is not to seek planning permission. The developers do not need to. It is, as they state, to seek the council’s “confirmation that prior approval is not required in exercising Permitted Development rights”.
And they offer some small crumb of comfort in respect of heritage concerns regarding the building: “The alterations required to facilitate the change of use are entirely internal and do not affect the elevations of the building,” they say in the developers’ application.
“All proposed dwellings are located at upper floors level.
“Whilst some servicing will take place at the ground floor level, this is in line with current arrangements and will not have an impact on any matters of heritage significance, since no external changes are proposed.
“On this basis there are no heritage factors that would prevent the grant of prior approval.” So that’s all right then.
And they state: “All dwellings meet the minimum space standards as set out in the National Described Space Standards.”
The developers’ drawings show that on 11 floors – 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21 – they think that they can accommodate 12 flats around the centre core and lift shaft. On floor 23, they plan a more modest eight flats.
Local hero: John Grindrod is a big fan of the 50p Building
Despite English Heritage’s rejection, No1 Croydon is a locally listed building, is registered as a “Local Designated View” and it sits in what passes for an “office retention area”. In 2012, when the London Olympic organisers designed 32 pin badges, one for each London borough, Croydon’s symbol was the 50p Building.
Writer John Grindrod, author of Concretopia and other works about the “brutalist” architecture of the late 20th Century, told Inside Croydon: “Converting offices to residential isn’t always bad (Leon House was handled pretty well), but Croydon has had a lot of bad examples of this, such as Delta Point.
“This is such a brilliant and well-loved building, it’s nationally famous, the heart of Croydon’s visual identity. The concerns would be that it gets an unsympathetic makeover, or that it is badly converted into microflats.
“And given it’s in the middle of a roundabout, there’s also no public realm for the residents.”
And Jerry Fitzpatrick, a former Labour councillor for the area, notes that before the notices went up this week, there had been no engagement with the community or neighbouring residents. He is also aware that the application cannot be referred to the council’s planning committee, but the matter is due to be decided – “determination” – by September 24, Fitzpatrick suggesting, “so planners could rush it through before regulatory changes take effect”.
Fitzpatrick said: “Croydon loses yet another site which provided employment, replaced by 250 small new flats in an area where there is market saturation of small flats.
“The flats’ occupants will become part of the very long queue to get a GP’s appointment.”
And the retired barrister told Inside Croydon: “Rational town planning is not about developers making a quick buck and the council increasing its Council Tax take.
“Rational town planning enables jobs and stable communities to be developed. Yet central Croydon continue to leech jobs and over-provide small flats. If Croydon town centre is once again to be a vibrant and safe hub, we have to change course quickly.”
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