Town Hall reporter KEN LEE on a planning committee meeting where Conservative councillors backed a private developer’s bid to drastically alter a listed family home in a conservation area
‘Hypocrite’: Ian Parker last night supported developers who want to destroy a family home
So much for Tory Mayor Jason Perry protecting family homes in the borough.
At last night’s meeting of the council planning committee, Ian Parker, the full-time professional politician and agent for the local Conservatives, voted in favour of turning a locally listed building in a conservation area into a seven-bedroom HMO – house of multiple occupation.
The planning application for 10, Woodstock Road was ultimately defeated – thanks to some judicious abstentions from Parker’s two fellow Tories on the committee and opposition from Labour committee members. Parker, New Addington councillor Lara Fish and the committee chair (and big buddies with Mayor Perry) Michael Neal voted in favour of the application.
But Parker’s enthusiastic support for gutting out a listed three-bed family home in the Chatsworth Road Conservatiion Area quickly prompted accusations that he is a “hypocrite”.
The planning application – a second one on this property in the space of 12 months – had the approval of the council’s planning officials, although this might be less surprising since one of the named officers, Ross Gentry, is married to the director of a development firm (a declaration that Gentry notoriously failed to make properly when he began working at the council).
Unprotected: Croydon Conservatives wanted to allow a developer to turn this building into an HMO
Some building work has already started on the Woodstock Road site, with scaffolding erected, potentially to make alterations to the building before planning permission has been granted. It will be worth noting whether the council’s usually feeble development control officials move in to take action to protect the local heritage building.
The council’s description of 10, Woodstock Road, says: “The site is a two-and-a-half storey semi-detached property on the southern side of Woodstock Road. It is within the Chatsworth Road Conservation Area, and is a locally listed building, making a positive contribution to the character and appearance of the Conservation Area.”
Objections to the planning application were unanimous, and all three Fairfield ward councillors, Ria Patel and Esther Sutton (Green Party) and Chris Clark (Labour) also objected to the proposals on a variety of grounds, including over-crowding and overdevelopment, as well as parking concerns.
Mayor Perry, Parker and the Tories have spoken often about how they have sought to protect similar family homes elsewhere in the borough from being converted or demolished to make way for flats and HMOs. Those efforts, last night’s decision confirmed, only apply in wards with Conservative councillors.
Parker is Croydon Conservatives’ veteran election agent and Coulsdon Town councillor, who appears to have extended the remit of his role recently to being an online troll of a young mother.
“There’s no way Parker would have accepted losing a family home to an HMO in the south of the borough,” one observer at last night’s Town Hall planning meeting told Inside Croydon.
“This exposes Parker as a hypocrite and the Tories and Mayor Perry as only being interested in one part of the borough.”
Read more: Agent on a mission overlooks Coulsdon Tories’ dark secret
Read more: Council bosses need to answer for Cheesbrough’s toxic legacy
Read more: Perry slammed for £439,000 in ‘golden hellos’ paid to new staff
Read more: Volunteer criticises Perry for taking credit for residents’ efforts
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Nosey Parker a complete Humbug. Who’d a thought it?
Hilarious hypocrisy, and not just from part-time Mayor Perry and Councillor Parker. Croydon South MP, Tory Chris Philp, has a page on his website entitled “Recent planning victories”. Entries include this one:
“Proposed loss of a family home changing into a 12-bedroom HMO (House of Multiple Occupancy) with the addition of multiple one and two storey extensions.
Refused due to providing sub-standard accommodation, inadequate bedroom spaces, lack of storage, insufficient kitchen facilities, poor internal layout, and failing to demonstrate that required ceiling heights would be achieved.
Result: Refused permission”
The address of this property? 38 Brighton Road, Purley, CR8 2LG. That’s the other half of the semi-detached property occupied, at number 36, used by Croydon Conservatives as their party headquarters and by Parker as his office. Bloody NIMBYs!
Dodgy Gentry still hanging on then? Is his wife still pulling the strings? Surprised he didn’t exit on the coattails of Cheesbrough.
Certainly begs the question why Ross Gentry twice presented a planning report that completely misrepresented the development and made statements to the Committee that were untrue (and why did his wife attend the meeting?) and also why Chris Clark twice tried to push through a development that he knew failed even mandatory policy.
Either personal interest or incompetence.
Both probably.
While the Tory NIMBYs in the south of the borough may not allow houses in their “manor” to be converted to HMOs (with bedsits and tiny, shoe-box flats), they have devised a more profitable housing scheme. The south of the borough is littered with detached houses with decent-sized gardens, which have been demolished and replaced by a block of 9 flats, with no garden but a large car park. Developers (a.k.a. cowboy builders) like to do these projects one at a time, so they don’t want the next door neighbours to offer their house to make it a bigger plot, because a development of 10 or more dwellings means they have to include some social housing, and that would eat into their big profit margin.
He was not the only hypocrite at that meeting.
Chris Clark, Fairfield councillor and a former chair of the planning committee, twice tried to push through a block of flats by Silverleaf Developments (another 9-flat block with no social housing) on an already intensified piece of land. That block of flats would have been on a site way smaller than 10 Woodstock Road, had 1 disabled car-parking space but no lift (‘not financially viable’) and no other on or off-street parking for 19 residents and their guests. As well as over-development and overcrowding, that development also failed every policy designed to protect neighbours including minimum separation distances and privacy, and those designed for safety such as the requirements for the children’s play area to be overlooked and for doors to be visible from the street.
The role of Councillors on the planning committee should be to act independently, regulate, hold the planners to account and uphold policy and law. Not for political point-scoring or who your mates are.
Clark did say on the Nextdoor app that he votes according to policy and would hold a public meeting but when I said I would come along and ask him about the list of policies this development failed, he went quiet:
https://insidecroydon.com/2023/01/17/home-owners-victory-after-four-year-battle-with-planners/
Government intends to move all but the very largest planning applications to officers to decide.
The Government should be reading Inside Croydon.
The Planning and Infrastructure Bill will have the most disastrous effect on local community input to or control of planning, and even worse impact on the conservation of green spaces and natural amenities. The ruthless pursuit of ”growth” at the expense of everything else is a complete betrayal by Labour of any socialist or community principles.
Well said Anthony.
Reminds me of the family house next to the proposed M&S in Purley. Wonder if the support would be the same if it was an Aldi or Lidl.