The combination of unreliable politicians and profit hungry developers is putting our green spaces under threat yet again. Peter Underwood, our candidate for Mayor of Croydon, writes about an example in South Croydon that shows that none of our green spaces are safe under Labour of the Conservatives.
I know how important our green spaces are to people in Croydon. We love our parks, woodlands, ponds, and even the small patches of nature and greenery we have dotted about the borough. These living vibrant spots are a vital contrast to the brick and concrete that surrounds us and 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 immediately put it back on the market claiming that is a site for new housing. It has then sold for £170,000.
Ashen Grove shouldn’t 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 chose to sell up to allow their house to be knocked down, the lack of access to the site would hopefully 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.
It is listed as one of Croydon’s Sites of Importance for Nature Conservation (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 his previous comments about protecting London’s green spaces, Sadiq Khan has now announced plans to “actively explore” building all over them.
Even the seller for Ashen Grove said in their 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 Conservative Government’s “Investment Zones” that would have removed planning protections and organisations like the RSPB referred to it 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 let them build more houses. Saying you can solve the housing crisis by building more houses is like claiming you can stop children in this country 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 and/or have derelict buildings that could be replaced with new housing. For example, not far from Ashen Grove is the old Selsdon Garage, which has stood empty for over 20 years waiting for a developer to build housing instead of just using it as a ‘land bank’.
Instead of letting developers destroy our precious green spaces we should be getting those existing plans delivered.
I know local residents are really against any new 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.