CROYDON IN CRISIS: As he makes yet another U-turn, Jason Perry is refusing to provide a list of heritage assets that his council won’t flog off.
EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
Run down: Heathfield House, its gardens and grounds, has been the victim of 20 years’ worth of neglect by its owners, Croydon Council, and the latest cut-backs
Mayor Jason Perry is preparing to put Heathfield House on the market again, a U-turn on a U-turn over the cherished public building, while he is also refusing to say which of Croydon’s other heritage properties will be flogged off by his cash-strapped council.
It is less than a month since part-time Perry was forced into another embarrassing climbdown, pulling the Grade II-listed building from public auction. Perry’s council wanted to sell Heathfield House with a guide price of £1million (significantly below any proper market valuation) when on offer with a 125-year lease.
Yesterday Perry appeared in a social media video in which he announced that his council will again seek to sell the leasehold to Heathfield House – potentially going directly against a government instruction that was contained in the agreement to grant his failing council a £136million “capitalisation direction”.
Jim McMahon, the local government minister, wrote to Perry in February, outlining the terms for this latest, most exceptional example of exceptional financial support.
The £136million, McMahon wrote, came with a series of conditions. These included: “If you are considering financing capitalisation support through capital receipts, I want to make clear at this stage that it is my expectation that councils should avoid the disposal of community heritage assets where possible to protect the public ownership of locally significant sites to ensure residents can continue to benefit from them.”
Such a condition had never appeared in previous capitalisation directions granted to Croydon – a by now annual whip-round by the government as Croydon has repeatedly failed to be able to balance its budgets.
Strings attached: minister Jim McMahon’s conditions ought to make it impossible for councils to sell heritage assets. Or balance their budgets
McMahon’s condition puts councils such as Croydon between a rock and the proverbial hard place: how can they pay-off the government loans without flogging off their assets, even the heritage ones?
Katharine Street sources express dismay at the situation. “We’ve pretty much sold off everything we can,” said one.
Since 2023, the council has been under the statutory control of the government-appointed “improvement” panel. “Their general position was ‘sell everything’,” according to a senior Conservative councillor.
Seeking greater clarity on Perry’s “strategy” (if that’s not too grand a word) on asset disposals, Stuart King, the leader of the Labour group at the Town Hall, has written to the Mayor asking for his disposals list.
King wrote: “In his letter to you dated 20 February 2025, the Minister for Local Government agreed to provide the council with Exceptional Financial Support subject, amongst other conditions, to an expectation that the council should ‘avoid the disposal of community heritage assets’.
U-turn update: piss-poor Perry’s video nasty in which he revealed he is trying again to flog the building leasehold
“This, he rightly said, was to protect the public ownership of locally significant sites to ensure residents can continue to benefit from them.
“Given the council recently listed Heathfield House as ‘for sale’ at a local auction, a decision that was thankfully reversed following a public outcry…”, King’s letter was written before Perry’s latest announcement, “… I am calling on you to urgently publish a list of all council assets which you consider meet the Minister’s Community Heritage Asset status.
“This will help reassure councillors and our residents that if a council-owned community heritage asset is listed on the register it will not be sold.
“In light of the clear and urgent public interest, I am calling on you to publish this Register
no later than 31 March 2025.”
Mayor Perry has not yet provided his council colleague with the courtesy of a reply.
Inside Croydon’s report on the proposed sale of Heathfield House last month prompted Perry’s Tory colleagues at the Town Hall to try to claim that Savills were marketing Heathfield House as some kind of “mistake”. As the council scrambled to try to get some kind of coherent, or credible, story together, they even tried to claim that offering the property on a 125-year lease was not selling it.
Less than a month later, and mendacious Perry has appeared on camera saying that’s exactly what he is trying to do. Again.
“Heathfield House has been badly neglected over the past 20 years,” a council insider admited today. “The council’s bungled efforts to off-load it previously, to a special school, then by converting it into a 17-room HMO that generates absolutely zero cash for the council, show how desperate they are to get it off the books.
“The council never invested wisely in maintenance of the building, literally ‘mending the roof while the sun shines’, and now that neglect is beginning to show.
“The sale through leasehold is the council’s last roll of the dice. Perry seems to think that someone with very deep pockets is going to come in and pay £1million for the place, and then spend millions more bringing it back up to a respectable standard, reinstate the gardens and the grounds, and then let the Croydon public have access just like nothing has changed.
“That might seem a tad unrealistic. And given the council’s litany of blunders in the past – over the Bridge to Nowhere, the bus shelters, the fiasco at the Fairfield Halls – who can really trust them to seal a deal with any third party that doesn’t see us all get screwed over yet again?”
The Italianate Victorian villa at the top of Gravel Hill was once the home of industrialist Raymond Riesco, who died in 1964, after having sold the property to the council.
When the property was previously offered for auction a month ago, some property experts suggested that valuation was only one-third, maybe even just one-quarter, of the true worth of the 12-bedroomed, eight reception room and three bathroom house.
For sale: Savills’ particulars for Heathfield House, ahead of the ultimately abortive auction. Perry’s council tried to claim it was all a mistake
The public petiton raised last month opposing the sale of Heathfield House attracted more than 2,500 signatures. It calls on the Mayor to offer “meaningful engagement” with the community to ensure the house remains in public hands.
The petitioners highlight how the particulars for the original auction by Savills offered Heathfield with “significant opportunities for redevelopment” (there was no mention of that in Perry’s latest video nasty), and the complete absence of any public consultation over the future of the building and grounds.
“Any sale of this site raises serious legal and ethical concerns and sets a dangerous precedent for public, historic and green spaces in the borough,” the petition states.
“Rather than exploring sustainable community-led options, the council has engaged in a pattern of exclusion and dishonesty, choosing opaque processes and private interests over public benefit.
“Rather than recognising Heathfield as the gem in its crown, Croydon Council has treated it like a thorn in its side.”
Read more: Council caught in new omnishambles over Heathfield House
Read more: ‘The improvement panel’s general position is to sell everything’
Read more: Long-neglected Heathfield House being rented out as 17 rooms
Read more: Riesco objections: Croydon Council’s squandering our heritage
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We know what Labour and the Greens think about piss-poor Perry’s plan to flog off yet another public asset on his wild goose chase to “fix the finances”.
What do the Conservative councillors think, in particular those in Selsdon & Addington Village, Robert Ward and Joseph Lee? Are they content with the Mayor’s madcap scheme to do the dirty in their back yard? Has the short-sleeved shirker got a buyer lined up that he’s promised our property? Will the Council’s legal team tell him he can’t sell it?
I think the electorate – and Local Government Minister Jim McMahon – should be told
“Mayor Perry listening to Croydon” is his catchphrase right ?
Heathfield House poses a problem. I don’t know how many decades have passed since it was lived in. When I lived nearby for 30 years, it was a training centre for the Borough’s gardening staff, and the site was always well-maintained. A conservation group used part of it later on. My sons used to spend plenty of time in the grounds as children, it was a beautiful place to race about, to explore and to admire the rhododendron collection, the stream through the rockery, and the pond.
I remember exploring the site after the 1987 storm, which did a lot of damage to the gardens and to the surrounding woodland. Its use changed to a general Council training centre and less attention was paid to maintenance of the grounds. After my family moved house 20 years ago we noticed when passing that less effort was made to keep it to such high standards, but when I visited Bramley Bank recently I was sad to see how Heathfield House and gardens had deteriorated. Its occupation by a school did not benefit the grounds at all, and putting in caretaker tenants was not a good way to keep the house occupied, although the tenants may have enabled Heathfield House to be insured.
I think it has been neglected too long for repairs to be affordable. If the house were sold for conversion into prestigious flats, the grounds would need to be maintained for public benefit, and anyone paying what such flats would be worth would expect to look out on managed gardens without public access. The disgrace is not that the site may be sold, but that it has been neglected for so long. If the Council does not sell it, will they just let it decay and eventually fall down? I can’t see that they could afford to do otherwise, and if it mysteriously burned down I don’t think they would mind.
Historic funders are willing to put money into the building. We were successful with one such funder, whose funds we then had to turn down because Croydon Council pulled it from the rental market claiming they were moving the registry office there, only to then relist it for leasehold sale a year later.
Just want to note for all reading that Jason Perry has chosen to not respond to the 2,500 person petition opposing this leasehold sale and calling for a public consultation on the future of the building, which was submitted nearly a month ago.
Officers also promised a public consultation on the future of this building in an FOI in December. Eye roll
You can insist on a public debate at the next meeting of full council.
Your 2,500 signatures warrant that.
Contact Democratic Services.
We have! Awaiting response (whilst acquiring wrinkles)
I suspect Cllr Ward is too busy watching the grass being cut
The problem with right wing politics is that you eventually run out of the people’s assets.
I’m not sure I am comparing apples with apples i.t.o. value of buildings and quantity of surrounding land sold(?), but at least Bromley council got £13.5m for their old Civic Centre, which looks better than Piss Poor Perry, the Arthur Daley of the plastic guttering world, flogging off Heathfield for only £1m ?