Croydon Council is in the middle of the process of updating the Croydon Plan, the blueprint for what development the Council want to see in Croydon until 2039. Tomorrow see the close of the consultation process and residents, businesses and community organisations have until tomorrow to give their views of the changes to the blueprint.

The CRO understands that a number of residents groups from all over Croydon have been submitting their views on the proposed update and there have been a lot of concerns expressed by residents groups about the proposed new areas of moderate residential intensification. These areas are earmarked by the Council as being areas where the Council hopes to relax current controls on what can and cannot be built, which will allow larger buildings on plots, small to medium blocks of flats and even whole new closes to be built. (see 3 in figure below).

Residents in the Whitgift Estate in Addiscombe are desperately concerned about the Council’s proposal to designate half of their estate as an area of moderate intensification. They feel that the character of their area will be severely compromised by the addition of new buildings, especially small blocks of flats and the splitting of plots on the Estate.

Whitgift Estate residents invited Labour mayoral candidate Valerie Shawcross to come and see their corner of Croydon so that she could appreciate for herself their fears about the potential for a complete change of character in their local streets.

She said ‘Coming to the Whitgift Estate to meet with local residents and have a look round the area has been invaluable. I am extremely concerned about this proposed policy for the updated Croydon Plan and I share residents’ concerns that this change to the Plan could mean that areas like the Whitgift Estate will lose a great deal of the character that makes these areas such great places to live’.

She continued ‘Croydon has always been a town where there has been a fantastic variety of places to live. It’s a great mixture of the urban and the suburban and I do not think that we do ourselves any favours by vandalising these suburban areas’.

Ms Shawcross expressed her concerns that the Whitgift Estate residents are not alone in their concerns about this new planning regime. She says ‘I am very aware of the concerns from many residents in south of the borough. The Council have to take notice of these residents’ very real worries about the future of their communities’.

Consultation for the update to the plan is closing tomorrow and council officers will be working on a submission to be sent to the central government by the early summer. Ms Shawcross added that ‘I am worried that the new administration, which I hope to be heading, will have its hands tied for nearly two decades. I will be making strong representations to the Council over the next few days to make sure that residents’ voices are heard’.