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.
London for sale: Mayor Sadiq Khan is now offering up the capital’s Green Belt
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.
Croydon Commentary provides a platform for any of our readers to offer their personal views and experiences about what matters to them in and around our corner of south London. To submit an article for publication, email us at inside.croydon@btinternet.com, or post your comment to an Inside Croydon article that has caught your attention
Recent Croydon Commentary columns:
- Our four MPs are doing nothing to try to stop carnage in Gaza
- Council bosses need to answer for Cheesbrough’s toxic legacy
- Who can afford £4,000 per month for Purley later living flats?
PAID ADS: To advertise your services or products to our 10,000 weekday visitors to the site, as featured on Google News Showcase, 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
- 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
