Sorry site: in December 2024, Historic England has issued a further warning about the state of disrepair of the Leslie Arms. Now its owner is trying to get out of his planning conditions
CROYDON IN CRISIS: Since 2000, a multi-millionaire property developer has been allowing a Grade II-listed pub to decay. Now, he wants to change the conditions of his latest planning permission. KEN LEE, Town Hall reporter, on the sorry tale of a historic Addiscombe landmark
In a town studded with sad sights and sad sites, the Leslie Arms is one of the very saddest.
A landmark at the junction of Lower Addiscombe Road and Cherry Orchard Road, the fine Grade II-listed building has graced Addiscombe since 1900, built to replace a pub of the same name which dated from the early years of Queen Victoria’s reign.
In its heyday, it was a busy local hostelry, at which live music was performed and it provided a venue for countless family celebrations and community events.
But The Leslie closed as a pub almost a quarter of a century ago.
The building was bought in 2000 by notorious local property developer Dr Anwar Ansari. Since that time, local politicians and residents’ groups have found themselves in a seemingly never-ending battle to ensure that the ground floor, with its heritage Victorian fixtures and fittings, and the basement of the Leslie Arms are retained for community use.
Rare glimpse: a photo from 2019 shows how the Grade II-listed pub’s Victorian interior had been stripped and allowed to deteriorate
Croydon Council’s planning register identifies 24 planning applications which Ansari has made for the property since 2001, the most recent updates being posted on Tuesday this week.
Because the Leslie Arms is Grade II-listed (“It is crucial that pieces of our heritage such as this are protected,” the Victorian Society has said of the Leslie), each application for full planning permission has to be coupled with a separate application for listed building consent, and there is an overlap between these tandem applications.
The sorry 25-year chronology of a once great Addiscombe pub
Until 2019, Ansari’s applications focused on carving conversions from the upper floors and creating extensions. Then, his next application seemed to recognise that he also needed to focus on “community use”. He put support for ground-floor community use in the foreground of the application, before getting to the commercial bit about adding two more flats.
The councillors for Addiscombe West kept themselves informed of the progress of the application. It was suggested that Ansari would wish to obtain £5,000 per month in rent for the community space. The sort of money that, realistically, a not-for-profit organisation would never be able to afford.
The application received intense scrutiny from the planners. Nearly four years passed before approval was granted.
Caught in the S*n: Anwar Ansari in 2016
Approval was granted subject to compliance with 17 detailed conditions which Ansari would need to comply with.
The 12th of those conditions stipulated that: “The proposed ground floor community use element (as shown on the approved plans) shall only be used for the provision of a café… and community use (… not including a place of worship) and for no other purposes.”
Croydon Council and Ansari entered into a Section 106 agreement, under which a developer makes a payment to the authority towards local infrastructure provision or improvements, in return for the planning permission. This S106 stipulated that before the new flats could be occupied, Ansari must have completed rectification work on the pavement and highway on the bit of Lower Addiscombe and Cherry Orchard Roads where his property sits.
It is perhaps worth laying out here a little bit about 67-year-old Dr Anwar Ansari.
Through his various businesses, including AA Homes and Housing, he has made himself a very wealthy man. Five years ago, he was estimated to own properties worth more than £170million.
Couldn’t care less: the sorry scene outside the Leslie Arms this week, where there is a bowed brick wall and unsightly hoardings that have been in place for 20 years
He was once a generous supporter of the Labour Party, locally and nationally. In 2014, when Labour won back control of Croydon Town Hall, it was property developer Ansari who paid the bills for Tony Newman’s victory party. In 2015, Ansari donated tens of thousands of pounds to Yvette Cooper for her campaign to become Labour leader and towards Sadiq Khan’s bid to be Labour’s candidate for London Mayor.
But Ansari has also often courted controversy, joining High Court action against his former chums over the Labour-run council’s landlord licensing scheme, being accused of having unsafe conditions in some of the central Croydon flats he had converted from office blocks, and making headlines in The S*n in 2016 when advertising for non-British brickies to work on the Leslie Arms site.
Most recently, he was convicted and ordered to pay £65,000 after his three large Turkish guard dogs escaped the enclosure of Coombe Farm (another Ansari-owned property) and attacked Lloyd Park joggers, other dogs and killed a family’s flock of hens. Dr Ansari says he is appealing against his conviction.
At the Leslie Arms, Ansari’s commitment to the provision of community space could never be described as enthusiastic. So it is perhaps unsurprising that he has conducted what appears to be a complete volte-face over his planning consent.
In this week’s application to the council planners, he seeks to have the basement and ground floor levels designated as flexible commercial/business/service space. Goodbye community. Hello, maximum yield.
Judging by previous planning applications, this latest submission from Ansari will be keenly opposed. What the latest potential stalemate will achieve for this long-neglected piece of Croydon heritage, though, is less certain.
Building site: some work appears to be going on at the Leslie Arms – though to what end is unclear
The Leslie has been in decline since Ansari purchased it.
It was first placed on English Heritage’s Heritage At Risk register in June 2009. That same year, the council served Ansari with a Section 215 notice, requiring him to take action to stop blighting the amenities of the neighbourhood. There’s little sign of Ansari ever taking any effective action. And less sign of the council’s planning enforcement team doing anything about it, either.
The blight has continued. The property is a local disgrace. The lament of English Heritage is also the lament of the Addiscombe community.
English Heritage doubled-down on its “at risk” status for the building as recently as December 2024. The Victorian Society, meanwhile, has called for the building to be taken into new ownership, to save it from any further harm.
Our timeline of Ansari’s planning applications, and the Leslie Arms’ decay, shows Ansari’s 25-year zeal to maximise the site for residential development.
If only he put the same effort into giving a little more to the community.
Dog conviction: Anwar Ansari photographed more recently, after he had a run-in with the law
The Leslie Arms was never a routine investment when he bought it in 2000. He knew that he was buying a large, historic and and Grade II-listed building, with all the obligations, and often costly maintenance, that should go with it. Such ownership ought to require a special duty of care.
Dr Ansari should be forced to take all the necessary steps to get the Leslie Arms off the At Risk register, and to comply with the planning constraints he has agreed to.
He should provide the community space in the ground floor that he promised six years ago, charging a rent that a not-for-profit organisation could reasonably afford to pay. He will still be raking in profits from the other parts of the building.
Multi-millionaire Anwar Ansari has the opportunity to leave a positive and lasting imprint in Croydon. The people of Addiscombe are hoping that, this time, he grasps it.
Read more: The sorry 25-year chronology of a once great Addiscombe pub
Read more: Addiscombe’s Grade II-listed Victorian pub ‘at immediate risk’
Read more: Property developer ordered to pay £65,000 over dog attacks
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“Dr” Ansari could better spend his time and money cleaning up the shithole that Coombe Farm has been allowed to become.
Do enjoy the wishful thinking in the last paragraph.
The essential problem is that by curtailing effective property regulation and the pauperisation of local goverment, there no longer exists any effective pushback against grifters like Ansari.
The market philosophy that has prevailed in the UK since the 80s claims that only by letting the private sector control development will create the maximun benefit to the economy.
I think you can see that, in Croydon, developers have been handed full control for development for the last three decades, and the pitiful mess we inhabit as a result.
Croydon Council should start proceedings to compulsorily purchase this property, and install CCTV to cover the area around it, before someone is paid to burn it down
I, for one, would prefer if there was no imprint at all left in Croydon, let alone Addiscombe, of the likes of Dr Ansari and his ilk.
People with immense wealth seek to protect that wealth with power, usually political. When I was active in the Croydon Labour Party, the sight of the throng of Labour councillors behaving like wasps around a pot of jam (other insect-related metaphors are available) in Ansari’s presence was, in my mind, eye-opening and at the same time, disconcerting.
I purposely made myself unavailable to be introduced as I do not like the whiff of sulphur.
You mean like flies round shit / pigs in the trough?
Money does funny things to such people in positions of power and influence, heads are easily turned!
“You mean like flies round shit / pigs in the trough?”
You may well say that but I could not possibly comment.
A person with integrity willing to share their experience of the realities of the darker side of the political inner workings – I’ll buy you a beer if we ever cross paths, Bob!
Don’t be surprised if it gets burnt down tomorrow….
Such a beautiful building that could bring this wretched Junction and this grotty area together. Brought back into proper use it could be made responsibly profitable and could be the start of a revitalisation of this dying part of town. As is the pavement is a danger to users and the hoarding and scaffolding an eye-sore. It feels like the desecration of this building is being used to bully locals into accepting whatever planning is put forward, (much like what is happening to the town centre). A more on-the-ball council would have stepped in years ago. It’s not too late. Ansari if reading – we would love you to bring this lovely building back into use and would love to support a decent genuine proposal.
typical developer.. buys listed building .. leaves it to rot .. then is allowed to knock it down as a dangerous structure . Croydon doesn’t need people like him on so many levels
Let’s hope it wont be a repeat of The Glamorgan / The Windmill / Drum & Monkey et al with the same suspicious MO once again?!
He is responsible for degrading historic woodland over 25 years in Lewisham and listed water tower in Somerset. Knows all the tricks and communities are exhausted trying to protect these places. He needs to be exposed and all these campaigns against AA Homes put under the spotlight. Can’t believe he is getting away with so much and all his antics with historic sites aren’t being looked at collectively and flagged in national press.
This man is the worst landlord I have ever encountered. I doubt he will ever finish the work needed on this. It should be seized from him.
Walked past the Leslie Arms today and the scaffolding is coming down.
We’ve seen the same. Just trying to discover what it might mean.
Could Ansari be carrying out the repairs identified by Historic England? The status of his appeal against his planning permission being rejected remains undecided.