‘Croydon’s Green Belt under threat!’ was the deliberately alarmist headline on a mass email from the Croydon South MP last week. Some have described it as ‘reckless scaremongering’. Others have called it ‘outright lies’.
BARRATT HOLMES, housing correspondent, puts down firm foundations with the facts
Green flash: it is said that you can see MP Chris Philp’s home from Hampstead
At risk of sounding like Corporal Jones from Dad’s Army…
“DON’T PANIC!”
Croydon South’s Tory MP Chris Philp issued another of his data-scraping petitions last week, effectively claiming that London Mayor Sadiq Khan wants to build thousands of homes on Croydon’s Green Belt.
Except Philp’s claim is entirely misleading. And it is entirely false if you live in Sanderstead, or Purley Oaks and Riddlesdown ward, or Purley and Woodcote, Kenley, Coulsdon Town or Old Coulsdon.
Inside Croydon can exclusively reveal that the Green Belt green spaces in all of those wards of Philp’s Croydon South constituency are perfectly safe.
How do we know that? Because the London Mayor’s revised London Plan says so in black and white.
Here’s a big clue. None of those wards – Sanderstead, or Purley Oaks and Riddlesdown ward, or Purley and Woodcote, Kenley, Coulsdon Town or Old Coulsdon – are anywhere near a Tube station.
Nor do any of them have the benefit of a tram stop, either.
And at the heart of the GLA’s plans to build the homes that London desperately needs is to have them built within short distances of Tube stations and other transport infrastructure, such as the tram network. And as anyone who actually lives in the area, unlike Hampstead-based Philp, the tram doesn’t go south of the Flyover in Croydon…
Inside Croydon reported in July how the new draft London Plan calls for 5,600 new, high-density homes on Croydon’s “Greenfield”, or Green Belt, land. This is in addition to 15,944 homes on Croydon brownfield sites. All to be achieved by 2037.
It’s mainly in Labour MP Natasha Iron’s Croydon East constituency that Mayor Khan’s housing team is proposing that those new homes could be built on Croydon Green Belt land. They have also earmarked green space in two of the Croydon South constituency’s wards: Park Hill and Whitgift and South Croydon.
Green Belt: sites within a 15min walk of these tram stops are what the draft London Plan is really looking at
The draft London Plan suggests the new homes being built down the tram line from East Croydon to Addiscombe and to New Addington, as well as close to South Croydon railway station.
Extra homes will also be sought near tram stops by converting family homes to flats – the Whitgift Estate is a likely target.
In his latest email, Philp wrote: “The green character of the suburban and semi-rural parts of Croydon is worth protecting at all costs. We are fortunate to have family homes, established neighbourhoods and large areas of green open space on our doorstep. That’s why many people choose to live here.
“I strongly oppose these proposals, and I have launched a petition calling on Sadiq Khan to abandon them and protect Croydon’s Green Belt for future generations…
False alarm: the Tory MP’s disingenuous email failed to mention the areas named in the draft London Plan
“Our Green Belt does much more than prevent urban sprawl. It protects the character of our communities, provides important habitats for wildlife and biodiversity, helps capture carbon and improve air quality, and gives local people places to walk, exercise and enjoy nature.” Improve air quality: this from the bloke who opposed ULEZ expansion, to the point of his endorsing a social media page that celebrated acts of vandalism against ULEZ cameras. When he was the… policing minister!
Philp’s arguments seem reasonable enough. “Once this land is developed, we cannot simply get it back. We can build the homes London needs without sacrificing the green spaces that make this neighbourhood special.”
What Philp fails to state is that the plans do not affect Sanderstead, or Purley Oaks and Riddlesdown ward, or Purley and Woodcote, Kenley, Coulsdon Town or Old Coulsdon.
And he knows it.
Detailed plan: there’s a full list of greenfield sites earmarked for development in Croydon in the draft London Plan. It does not include the vast majority of Chris Philp’s Croydon South constituency, despite the MP’s reckless scaremongering
In his email Philp, now the Conservatives’ shadow home secretary, criticises not only Mayor Khan’s Labour Party but also the LibDems and Reform Ltd.
“It’s nothing more than reckless scaremongering,” according to a (non-Labour) Katharine Street source.
“He’s dissembling and misleading,” said another council source. “It’s outright lies.”
In fact, the only Croydon green space that has been flogged off for housing in the last six years was part of a park in the north of the borough, with a Victorian lodge. This public green space was sold under the Conservative administration of Mayor Jason Perry.
Hole in one: back in 2024, Tory Mayor Perry was caught out trying to do a deal to hand Green Belt land to an exclusive private golf club
That’s the same Tory Mayor who wanted to hand over a chunk of the Green Belt in the Addington Hills to a posh, and private, golf club. There were no alarming email appeals and petitions from MP Philp on that occasion.
Philp’s false alarm call across the south of the borough has been helped by a planner at City Hall not knowing just how elastic the words “Southern Croydon” can be in terms of describing where development could go. Croydon has Croydon South, Philp’s parliamentary constituency. Then there’s South Croydon, the general area. That includes South Croydon council ward, which has defined boundaries. All of which can be a cause of confusion for the unwary.
But “Southern Croydon“? That could mean anywhere from Katharine Street to the Greater London boundary at Coulsdon.
Realistically, the planners are eyeing places, parks and green spaces such as Haling Grove, perhaps Park Hill and Addiscombe Recreation Ground, Ashburton Park, Lloyd Park, Coombe Farm and the Addington Hills, the under-utilised farmland on Gravel Hill, an under-used golf course off Featherbed Lane, and all green spaces in New Addington except in its furthest southern and eastern parts.
That’s more than enough to cope with in having an informed debate, without spoiling sensible discussion through misleading exaggeration, as Philp has done for his own political interests.
Perry, Croydon’s failed Mayor, was spending his overpaid time last week at a London Assembly committee meeting reviewing London Plan. He noted that the 5,600 homes on Croydon green spaces and Green Belt come at the same time as the number of homes required of Croydon on brownfield sites has been reduced. Croydon’s overall target for new homes has gone up by only 4%.
Permitted development: No1 Croydon is the latest, and possibly among the last, Croydon office blocks to be converted into flats
Philp and Perry’s Conservatives have always claimed that all needed homes can be built on Croydon brownfield land.
But market conditions are affecting the viability of brownfield development.
There is a collapse in demand for leasehold flats. People seeking their own homes dislike and distrust a system which make them vulnerable to price gouging by a freeholder’s management fees.
Croydon’s wave of Permitted Development seems to have passed – the town centre must have run out of old office blocks to convert into rabbit-hutch flats. Higher interest rates and rising building costs are deterring new schemes.
Flats developed under PD provided a significant number for the borough to meet its housing quota. In future, Croydon will need to find other sites to meet its housing targets, even the reduced number of 15,944 units. And Green Belt development is usually cheaper to deliver.
The only way that brownfield targets could be secured in current tough market conditions is through public social housing or subsidy. So those 3,000-or-so flats proposed in the latest version of Westfield’s “regeneration” of Croydon town centre could come in very useful. But the reason that the scheme has stalled – the planning application promised for 2024 has never materialised – is because the Paris-based developers are holding out for millions in public subsidy.
And it is an increasingly unlikely prospect after Prime Minister Andy Burnham went back on his promises on council and public sector housing.
Remember the false promises made in 2021 and 2022 over the Purley Pool? Green Belt scare stories seem certain to be the issue that mischievous and misleading Croydon politicians will seek to exploit all the way to the 2028 London elections and the General Election, whenever that happens.
- Click here to visit the GLA website and read the draft London Plan in full. Once you’ve done that, email the link to the plan to chris.philp.mp@parliament.uk with the words ‘Reckless scaremongering’ in the subject field
Read more: London’s ‘Lord Mayor’ puts Croydon Green Belt in his plan
Read more: Perry challenge to Khan: ‘Croydon’s Green Belt is sacrosanct’
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Well it’s nice to see he’s recovered from being shot at. Though he wasn’t actually shot at, but that didn’t stop him.
Nice that Kemi has confidence in him as Home Secretary but won’t let him anywhere near deputising for her at PMQs.
But telling blatant porkies is stupidity behind belief when there are official documents that disprove you.
Let’s get it out of the way first, Chris Philp MP scare mongering? Shock horror! Yes we need more housing, but we need a mix, not just more flats, but also family housing at affordable prices and affordable rents.
We need social housing not more housing for developers to make fortunes.
Central government and local government have to take responsibility for building these kinds of homes. I hate the word units.
These aren’t monopoly pieces they are peoples’ houses, you know our brothers and sisters, children and grand children, and those friends we haven’t made yet. So, brown field sites yes, perhaps some green field sites as well. But responsibility lies with government not developers. If we leave it to them watch as the cost rises, the cost to us that is.
I’m not sure how safe anywhere in Croydon is under the current planners. Ross Gentry told a committee that a development on a tiny site qualified for further intensification under policy H2 of the London Plan even though it didn’t meet the Public Transport Access Level requirements of 3 to 6 (the site was 1) or the distance requirements to the town centre or train station. Either incompetent or lying. Given that he said a number of things to the same committee that weren’t true, probably the latter.
Maybe Perry can explain why Dodgy Gentry the Filibuster is still holding a taxpayer funded role?
Re “the Paris-based developers are holding out for millions in public subsidy”:
Can the council not tell them: develop the site now or sell it to someone who will. If they need to sell at a loss, so be it. I don’t understand why the whole town/borough should be held hostage to their greed.