BARRATT HOLMES, housing correspondent, on the latest non-developments in the saga of a scrap of town centre open space without planning permission
‘Withdrawn’: the Savills’ estate agents’ website with its blunt message
Croydon Mayor Jason Perry might have another half-million-pound hole in his overspent, unbalanced council budget, after a property due to be auctioned was abruptly withdrawn from sale without any reason.
Inside Croydon reported exclusively last week how a small scrap of open space at the junction of Edridge Road and Coombe Road, next to heritage-listed building Ruskin House, was set to be auctioned off with a guide price of £550,000.
The council-owned site was among several sold, at below true market value, to the council-owned house-builders, Brick by Brick. BxB paid just £100,000 for this town centre site, where at one point they were seriously suggesting squeezing in nine homes.
But thanks in large part to Brick by Brick’s catastrophic business failure, and their bankrupting of the council, they never got as far as sending in the bulldozers.
As iC reported, the curiosity of the auction listing was that the site was being offered with planning permission in place – when council records indicate that no such planning permission exists.
“Maybe that’s why the lot was withdrawn from auction, perhaps they found out there is no planning permission,” according to one source.
Planning permission on a site being sold for development would add significantly to any price likely to be achieved. Likewise, a lack of such planning permission would drive down the price developers would be prepared to pay.
Coronation Street: the tightly packed four houses on the small patch of land, as shown in the application document
Auctioneers Savills have failed to provide any explanation for the late change of auction plans.
They had advertised the site as being with planning permission for a Coronation Street-style terrace of four houses on the site – one four-bed and three three-bedroomed houses. Savills’ listing for the auction, where the site was Lot 275, is now annotated as “Withdrawn”, but it still includes the claim that planning permission has been granted.
Croydon Council’s own planning portal states that the status of the application for the site is “pending”.
The planning application was submitted in February this year by Regent Land and Developments Ltd, a company with offices in South Croydon. It was supposed to be considered at a planning sub-committee meeting in June. But that meeting was cancelled.
Croydon Council’s planning committee under Conservative Councillor Michael Neal has met only three times since mid-May, and apart from the cancelled June meeting, the planning application for the Coombe Road plot was not on the agenda for any of them. Nor is it on the agenda for the next scheduled meeting, tonight.
With the planning committee barely operational under Neal, many applications are now being signed off in private by council planning officials, without the benefit of any public scrutiny. But the Coombe Road plot does not appear in any of the copious volumes of summaries of application approvals given under these delegated powers, either.
Called in: Green councillor for Fairfield ward Ria Patel
According to the planning department’s report on the application – in which council staff recommended approval – the scheme drew unanimous opposition from local residents, and not a single comment in support. All three Faireild ward councillors – Labour and Green – objected, giving a variety of reasons including “loss of open space”, “adverse impact on neighbouring heritage building, Ruskin House” and “concern around the development being dense”.
The application was “called-in” by Chris Clark, a former Labour chair of planning, and Green councillor Ria Patel, meaning that they exercised their duties as Fairfield ward councillors to have the matter discussed in public. That has never happened.
Concerns remain about the proposal in a number of areas, including the sensitive location close to the Georgian Ruskin House, a listed building and home to left-leaning and progressive organisations, including the editorial offices of the Morning Star newspaper and the HQ of the Communist Party of Great Britain (that fact, alone, could knock tens of thousands off the property prices for any neighbouring houses…).
Read more: Another Croydon scandal: the £3k per month high-rise slums
Read more: Brick by Brick’s final flats put up for rent at £2,400 per month
Read more: BxB’s collapse was predictable. Why did no one else notice?
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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
What a complete and utter shambles. Some things never change.