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.”
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