A new planning application for the controversial development of the site of Purley Pool is to be submitted in January.
Out of his depth: Jason Perry broke his promises on Purley Pool and now seems strangely invested in a scheme for hundreds of retirement homes
That’s according to an email to some residents’ associations from Mayor Jason Perry, who appears to be taking more than merely a civic interest in the money-spinning, multi-million-pound scheme, while being archly selective with whom he chooses to share his inside information.
Piss-poor Perry made it one of his election pledges in 2022 to re-open Purley Pool, when he claimed that it would cost the council less than £3million to carry out the necessary upgrades and repairs. Croydon Conservatives even produced a little promotional video to back up the claims.
Perry was either lying, or didn’t know what he was talking about, as exposed by detailed and specialist surveys of the state of the pool.
Now, he is backing developers, Polaska, who have shady offshore ownership in the Virgin Islands tax haven, and have offered the “free” provision of a public pool and gym,in return for being allowed to build 220 “later living” retirement homes on the site of the Purley Leisure Centre, multi-storey car park and long disused supermarket.
The planning application was submitted earlier this year, with a deadline for consideration that came and went in the autumn.
Polaska’s – and Perry’s – scheme was roundly rejected by the Greater London Authority as “wholly unacceptable” because of the absence of any affordable homes among the hundreds of flats. And this after Polaska had the “benefit” of at least two pre-application meetings with planners from City Hall and Croydon before submitting their application.
Overdevelopment: Polaska’s original scheme, submitted in March, is a massive retirement complex, with a little leisure centre tacked on
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” – which would blow a massive hole in Polaska’s get-rich-quick proposals.
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.
Volunteers at the RAs have highlighted the loss of virtually all of Purley’s town centre parking, with the demolition of the multi-storey car park to make way for the flats for the elderly.
A video released on the day before July’s General Election by LibDem candidate for Croydon South, Major Richard Howard, outlined in some detail the shady nature of the massive property deal being pushed through by Perry’s council.
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.
Perry omitted to include some of those objecting residents’ association in the circulation list of his latest email update about the “progress” with the Purley Pool scheme.
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.
One of the significant concerns about the viability of the deal was not only that the company behind it, Polaska Assets Ltd, was ultimately owned by a company based in the British Virgin Islands, but that neither Perry nor MP Chris Philp would come clean about naming the ultimate beneficial owners of the business.
Nor could they point to any other developments, even of a minor scale, that Polaska Assets Ltd had ever managed to deliver successfully.
Election promises: Perry has not reopened Purley Pool. But he is very supportive of a high-profit development for the site
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 most of the comments were critical and objecting to the proposed scheme.
The “determination deadline”, the date by when the council’s planning department, and the planning committee, was supposed to have reached a decision was June 14. The next significant date, according to the council’s own planning portal, was the “agreed expiry date”, which was October 31.
Polaska and Perry’s plans for the Purley Pool have never been brought forward to the council’s planning committee.
In the nine months since the planning application was submitted, there’s been no noticeable change in Polaska’s trading status: it remains a dormant company, and hardly one that looks likely to be able to deliver a development of £70million-worth of “later living” flats.
Residents will be watching closely to see what changes are made when, as Mayor Perry says his chums at Polaska will do, they submit revised plans in the New Year.
Read more: GLA rejects Polaska Purley Pool plan as ‘wholly unacceptable’
Read more: Residents’ groups reject Purley ‘pool’ plan backed by Perry
Read more: Tories warn residents: don’t dare complain about Purley pool
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Purley pool, Whitgift shopping centre, tram line extensions – don’t you get fed up of politicians making promises that they have no chance of delivering?
I believe in being ambitious and I believe we need to make big changes in Croydon but I also believe politicians should be honest about what can realistically be achieved.
I love to know what the person that downvoted this comment disagreed with?
The Green’s i360 tower in Brighton was ambitious and a £32m disaster.
When you’re not getting the wrong end of the stick or embarrassing yourself, you’re coming out with irrelevancies.
As for wasting public money, you should start by concerning yourself with the billions of pounds your beloved Conservatives flushed down the drain (or into the pockets of themselves and their donors) during the last 14 years
So let me get this right. There a company based offshore for tax avoidance, that nobody knows anything about, that has no track record in building anything that wants to build a couple of hundred flats a leisure centre and a swimming pool. Yet these two Tories think it’s be best choice.
Couldn’t we at least get a legitimate construction company to do it?