London’s deputy mayor Jules Pipe has stepped in over a project with 220 retirement flats worth an estimated £70m and not a single affordable new home. EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
Off target: Polaska wants to build £70m-worth of ‘later living’ flats, without any affordable homes
City Hall has rejected proposals from shady developers Polaska to build 220 “later living” flats on the site of Purley Pool as “wholly unacceptable”, blowing a massive hole in another of Croydon Mayor Jason Perry’s increasingly crackpot and unviable schemes.
The GLA has rejected the scheme because of the lack of any affordable housing in the proposals, despite Polaska having had the benefit of at least two pre-application meetings with planners from City Hall and Croydon before submitting their application.
The £70million-worth of “later living” flats proposed by Polaska would also remove around 400 car parking spaces from Purley town centre, which attracted widespread criticism from several residents’ associations.
The London Plan’s strategic target is for at least half of new homes to be “affordable”, with 30% of these available at “low cost rent”, such as social rent or London Affordable Rent.
Even Croydon’s own Local Plan has a target of 40% of the overall new-build supply being “affordable”.
Businessman: Tory Mayor Jason Perry
But Tory Mayor Perry and his Conservative councillors chose to ignore these rules when giving their full support to the project, proposed by a developer who has never delivered a scheme of a similar scale, and who is ultimately controlled by shadowy directors based in the British Virgin Islands tax haven.
Inside Croydon has obtained a letter, dated last April, sent to Croydon Council’s planning department on behalf of Jules Pipe, London’s deputy mayor for planning, regeneration and skills.
“The Deputy Mayor considers that the application does not yet comply with the London Plan,” the letter stated, bluntly.
The City Hall letter referred Croydon’s planners, and Polaska, to their own review of the application in a 16-page report, where it states: “The application has a nil affordable housing provision stating the scheme is subject to significant viability challenges due to the costs of reproving [providing] the leisure centre and associated facilities at nil cost to the council/public.
Issues: how the GLA report rejected the proposals for 220 flats on the site of Purley Leisure Centre, and called for a ‘car-free development’
“A nil affordable housing offer, on public land with a strategic ambition of 50% remains wholly unacceptable given the London Plan’s intent to maximise affordable housing delivery.
“To justify the offer, the applicant has provided a viability assessment, which is being robustly interrogated by GLA officers to ensure the scheme delivers the maximum amount of affordable housing.”
A City Hall source told Inside Croydon today that, “Croydon Council will need to respond to the points raised in this report before going back to committee.” Which sort of suggests that, six months on, Croydon Council has failed to respond to the points raised in the GLA’s report.
Piss-poor Perry made it one of his election pledges in 2022 “to re-open Purley Pool”. He said nothing about building a new one as part of a massive property deal with private developers.
In an unprecedented move, seven local residents’ associations banded together to submit lengthy and carefully considered objections to the scheme, highlighting the inaccuracies, inexactitudes and blatant lies contained within the planning application.
Robust: Deputy mayor Jules Pipe has officials checking the application
The objectors viewed the application for what it is: an attempt by profit-hungry developers to get around planning regulations over affordable housing by fobbing off Croydon with a “free” swimming pool and leisure centre.
Polaska submitted its (seriously flawed) planning application on March 4 this year.
All the deadlines for consultations have come and gone.
The application attracted more than 1,200 public comments, an especially high response rate. And mostly critical and objecting.
As Inside Croydon reported last month, the “determination deadline”, the date by when the council’s planning department, and the planning committee, is supposed to have reached a decision was June 14.
The next seemingly significant date according to the council’s own planning portal is the “agreed expiry date”, which was listed as Thursday October 31.
There is just a single planning committee scheduled on the council’s website for November, next week (November 7). There is no mention of the Polaska application in the agenda for that meeting. There are two planning committee meetings scheduled for December, though no agenda is available for either of them as yet.
“The Purley proposal looks likely to come before the planning committee by the end of the year,” a Katharine Street source confides. “Though whether they’ve managed to satisfy City Hall’s ‘robust interrogation’ seems unlikely,” they said.
The GLA planners had other reservations with the Polaska project, too, some of which may cause concern among the RAs.
Under “Sustainable development and environmental matters”, the GLA says that “Further information is required on energy, circular economy, whole life-cycle carbon and air quality.” Which is hardly a good relfection on the original application as submitted by the developers.
And on car parking, the GLA says that the scheme needs to provide even fewer spaces than those included in the original proposal.
The GLA report says: “The proposal should remove general car parking, to be a car-free development and drop-off spaces should be internal to the development. Further information is required on trip generation and cycle parking, construction logistics, deliveries and servicing plans should be secured.”
Read more: Panicked Purley Pool developer in appeal for public support
Read more: Residents’ groups reject Purley ‘pool’ plan backed by Perry
Read more: Tories warn residents: don’t dare complain about Purley pool
Read more: Council backs Purley Pool tax dodge by off-shore company
FREE ADS: Paid-up subscribers to Inside Croydon qualify for a free ad for their business, residents’ association or community group, just one of the benefits of being part of our online community. For more information about being an iC subscriber, click here for our Patreon page
PAID ADS: To advertise your services or products to our near 10,000 weekday visitors to the site, which is featured on Google News Showcase and followed by 16,000 on Twitter/X, email us inside.croydon@btinternet.com for our unbeatable ad rates
- 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
Piss-poor part-time Perry’s Purley Pool Plan poleaxed!
A Perry belly flop, if you will.
I expect Perry and his stooges in Croydon Tories will blame this on Labour, rather than admit their dodgy ill-considered scheme was always hopeless
Let’s see what emerges when, or if, the papers appear for the planning committee…
Do you not want to see a new leisure centre Arfur?
Do you not want to see affordable homes Derek?
I’ll answer “yes” to your question. Now will you answer my question?
It’s not one or other. It’s both. Thanks to Perry and Philp’s ill-conceived plan, it’s neither
We’ll have to see – hopefully they’ll submit a more acceptable plan
But what idiot encouraged them to submit a “wholly unacceptable” proposal in the first place? Oh, wait…
Not me!
There’s a simple cost-benefit analysis to be done.
Provision of a swimming pool within overall build: £12m (maybe less), the operating costs of which the council would have to pay for.
Provision of 50% affordable housing within the same scheme: £20m (estimated).
Now why would a public servant, elected to represent the people of Croydon, Mayor Perry, be lobbying for the former over the latter, in favour of the shadowy business based in the British Virgin Islands?
A lot to absorb here but an interesting report leading one to believe that this is in a holding pattern and probably likely to fail
I’ve said this for long enough. This isn’t going to happen. Can we have a referendum to get rid of the role of elected Mayor? He’s had enough time and has proved the position is utterly pointless.
You’ll have to wait until 2031. The rules demand 10 years between referendums.
Maybe people just need to be a good deal more careful when electing a mayor in future. You know, like actually voting someone with some real credibility and integrity. There’s got to be someone around like that.
Shame. Oh well, there’s always the election in a couple of years or so. Guess he’s got time to turn things round by then – or not.
They really need to just approve the plans and give Purley back its pool and gym. The plans look great. Couldn’t care less about affordable housing. Just a load of pointless red tape.
Perry has experience in dealing with shady businessmen
Look at the bus shelter debacle, how much did he lose in that? We are still standing in the rain waiting for a bus
Mr Perry is obviously preparing for the time when the Caterham Bourne ‘overspill’ once again fills up the Purley Cross underpass so that he can proclaim ‘a new open air freshwater pool for the centre of Purley’ and deliver his (and Mr P’Hilps’) election ‘pledge’.
It’s not just the lack of affordable house, it’s the crap token gesture of a pool being chucked in to get planning – it’s too small, the changing facilities are crap – it has no street presence , it’s not deep enough, there no good daylight – it’s a piss poor fucking rubbish offer being served up to Croydon, and Perry and Cheesbrough are so inept, they don’t know a terrible offer when it put in front of them. 220 flats for this piss-shit planning gain – Croydon gets ripped off once again.