Residents’ associations in and around Coulsdon are encouraging their members and other locals to weigh-in with support for plans to build the long-promised NHS medical centre on the site of a former primary school on Malcolm Road.
Less-than-handsome: the CGIs of the proposed medical centre are unlikely to win plaudits for architectural merit
With £9.8million funding approved by the NHS last year, planning approval should be a formality, although given the curse of Brick by Brick on so many schemes around the borough, the RAs are taking nothing for granted.
The medical centre was one part of a multi-site proposal for Coulsdon, using council-owned land, which made only glacially-slow progress. Seven years after it was granted planning permission, housing on the Lion Green car park began to be occupied only last year – though the cash-strapped council had to flog off the flats in a suspiciously convoluted finance scheme.
And the stop-go-stop progress for the medical centre – where the proposed site is currently being used as a car park for a local dealership – has been halted once before by an impasse between the council’s own Design and Place Review Panel, which rejected initial designs.
MP support: Chris Philp, who has a property in Coulsdon, has supported the medical centre proposals
The proposed amendments which removed a disabled drop-off point and parking bay for ambulances saw the residents’ associations that had lobbied so hard for the medical centre forced to object to what they called “this detrimental change”.
Having sight of the computer-generated graphics for the current proposal for the Coulsdon medical centre, it is hard to understand how such an unprepossessing building has managed to sneak past any self-respecting design and place panel. But apparently, it has.
It was in 2016 when a NHS report on medical services in Coulsdon concluded that, with the Barratts estate on Cane Hill and more than 2,000 new dwellings on their way, there might just be a need for a new medical centre in Coulsdon. The old Smitham School site was earmarked for the purpose.
Covid, the council’s financial crash and collapse of Brick by Brick, rampant rises in construction costs and a NHS spending freeze have all come and gone, having caused further brakes on the delivery of the Coulsdon centre, but the planning application Ref 25/00191/FUL is at last on the council’s website.
The proposals are for a single-storey building with five treatment rooms, which could be extended in the future, but now with the all-important disabled drop-off and ambulance access from Woodcote Grove Road, with pedestrian-only access from Chipstead Valley Road.
One step closer: locals are hopeful their Coulsdon medical centre could be open next year
There’s optimistic murmurings about the centre being completed by summer 2026.
The scheme is supported by the local MP, Chris Philp, Coulsdon’s Tory councillors and Croydon’s NHS Trust, so it’s hard to see what could possibly get in its way… Although it is less than 12 months since residents were shocked when they saw that the council had placed the former CALAT site and car park for sale at £1.8million.
That public relations gaffe by the cash-strapped council was swiftly smoothed over when the NHS came forward as preferred buyers.
“The local RAs are supporting this application, and we are hoping residents show their support on Croydon’s planning page,” an email distributed by one residents’ group last night says.
Read more: Coulsdon ‘shafted’ by Tories as NHS centre site put up for sale
Read more: Long-planned Coulsdon medical centre in ‘critical condition’
Read more: Brick by Brick’s final flats put up for rent at £2,400 per month
Read more: Building towards the council’s financial ruin, Brick by Brick
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