CROYDON COMMENTARY: With mounting pressure on local authorities to allow the building on Green Belt land, PETER UNDERWOOD raises concerns that private profit is being put before people
No through road: getting on to the Ashen Grove site would require the demolition of neighbouring homes – if the residents agreed to sell
The combination of unreliable politicians and profit-hungry developers is putting our green spaces under threat yet again.
I know how important our green spaces are to people in Croydon. We love our parks, woodlands, ponds and the small patches of nature and greenery we have dotted about the borough. These living, vibrant places are a vital contrast to the brick and concrete that surrounds us. They bring so much joy into our lives.
Sadly, too many of our politicians and the money-obsessed developers just don’t care.
The latest example is the sale of Ashen Grove. This small patch of woodland was sold recently for £105,000 and the new buyer has immediately put it back on the market for a higher price, claiming that is a site for new housing.
Ashen Grove should not be built on for lots of reasons. The obvious first reason is that there is no easy access to this site. It has footpaths at either end and, despite the active imagination of whoever created the computer images, none of the entrances appear to be wide enough for a road – which means no access for fire engines or ambulances if they were ever needed.
Unless one or more of the neighbours to the entrances choose to sell up to allow their home to be knocked down, the lack of access to the site would make any development here impractical.
The next reason for not building here is that it is an important site for nature. There are some very old trees on the site, an active badger sett and a wide variety of other interesting natural features.
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It is listed as one of Croydon’s Sites of Importance for Nature Conservation, a SINC, and guidance says that development that negatively impacts a SINC should only be permitted in exceptional circumstances. However, it appears that the definition of “exceptional circumstances” might now be stretched to include meeting the arbitrary housing targets set by the new Labour government.
Despite all his previous comments about protecting London’s green spaces, London Mayor Sadiq Khan has now announced plans to “actively explore” building all over them.
Even the seller for Ashen Grove says in their estate agent’s sales blurb “prospective buyers may wish to refer to national target set for new home development… and may result in sites not previously considered suitable for development now being considered by planning authorities”.
Before any local Conservatives try to claim that they are any better than the Labour government and Labour Mayor of London, I would remind them that Conservative Mayor Perry was desperate for Croydon to be one of the previous Conservative government’s “Investment Zones” that would have removed planning protections. Organisations like the RSPB referred to the policy as an “attack on nature”.
Both Labour and the Conservatives have been conned by their rich developer friends into believing that the only way to fix the housing crisis is to let them build more homes. Saying you can solve the housing crisis crisis by building more houses is like claiming you can stop children going to bed hungry by getting farmers to produce more food – it is a fundamental misunderstanding of the problem.
Even if you do believe we need more houses, there are plenty of places in Croydon that already have planning permission or have derelict buildings that could be replaced with housing. Not far from Ashen Grove, for example, is the old Selsdon Garage, which has stood vacant for more than 20 years, thought to be used as a “land bank” by a developer.
Instead of letting developers destroy our precious green spaces so they can make more and bigger profits, we should be getting those existing plans delivered.
I know that Selsdon residents, and the Selsdon Residents’ Association, are really against any development on Ashen Grove and I will work with them to do all we can to stop this precious green space being destroyed.
As a candidate for Mayor of Croydon, I also promise to do all I can to protect our green spaces right across the borough, and I will fight back against any plans from Labour or Conservatives to build on them.
Peter Underwood, pictured right, is the Green Party’s candidate for Croydon Mayor in 2026
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Green spaces should not be built on. They provide oxygen and tie up carbon, as well as providing areas for recreation, thereby benefiting mental and physical health.
I may be in a minority but I’m happy to see more tower blocks in Croydon. They provide plenty of homes for a small footprint.
Well said Peter Underwood. These green spaces are precious, and once they are gone, there’s no getting them back.
“Both Labour and the Conservatives have been conned by their rich developer friends into believing that the only way to fix the housing crisis is to let them build more homes.”
At least the crooked politicians have moved on (although not entirely) from their earlier claims that “the only way to solve the roads/traffic congestion crisis” was to build more roads. The building of the daft Silvertown tunnel is London Mayor, Sadiq Khan’s “guilty secret”, and now the Labour government have approved initial plans to build another tunnel, the Lower Thames crossing, between Gravesend and Tilbury.
Rather than building on the green belt, the government should look at seizing the vacant land around the Nestle building that R&F Properties have sat on for years, making no progress on their Queens Square development, and build on there.
Maybe one day the old garage next to Aldi in Selsdon will be redeveloped.
I wonder with all the flats if the infrastructure is there. At Purley Cross there is often a smellof blocked drains.
If development were allowed on a small green space in Ashen Vale, developers will look around Croydon’s map for the next site. Foxearth Road has a nice space which the original developers left for the foxes, you could get a few flats on there. Chestnut Grove on Ballards Farm – room for a good development?
There are several Forestdale spaces which Wates left for the residents to enjoy, but we don’t matter any more, nor do the badgers, foxes, deer and enormous variety of birds.
Maybe bits of the Selsdon Park former golf course could accommodate a few hundred occupants? There’s all that wasted land down Gravel Hill, bordering on Heathfield land, add a tram crossing and there could be a new “village” development with no parking spaces.
New Addington has loads of fields around the estate, never see anyone there, they won’t notice a new housing estate, maybe shared occupancy units? I haven’t even looked at Sanderstead yet! Hell on earth is not very far away…
What are we paying the Planning Department for?