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By JOHNNY DOBBYN, housing writer
Easy conversion: family homes can be split into flats more easily under Tory Chancellor’s changes
The campaign against flat developments in the south of the borough that has been led by Tories Chris Philp and Jason Perry has been dealt a severe blow by… the Conservative Chancellor’s Autumn Statement.
Buried deep in Jeremy Hunt’s announcement to the Commons this week was the news that, from next year, he intends to allow family homes to be converted into flats without the need for anything so troublesome as planning permission. It is, effectively, a flat-builders’ free pass.
Under permitted development rules, everyone has been allowed to replace windows or build a single-storey extension in their own home without having to seek permission from the council. Hunt now intends to “streamline the system through a new Permitted Development Right… for subdividing houses into two flats without changing the façade”.
It’s a move that will result in the destruction of suburban family homes that Philp, the MP for Croydon South, and Perry, Croydon’s part-time Mayor, have said that they are utterly opposed to.
The idea for this kind of sub-division of houses was first floated by The Intergenerational Foundation in 2016, which described it as an opportunity for older people to “downsize in situ”. Two of the three case studies featured in its white paper Unlocking England’s ‘Hidden Homes’ were in, you guessed it, Croydon.
Out of the loop: MP Philp’s message on Monday. From Wednesday, it was Tory policy to not even insist that house conversions into flats had to be considered by council planners, so ‘destroying family homes and changing the green nature of many neighbourhoods’
Hunt had plainly not consulted with his Croydon parliamentary colleague over what he was going to announce, as only on Monday of this week, Philp was emailing constituents about his and Perry’s “success” in stopping flatted schemes.
“Under Croydon’s new… approach to planning, applications to destroy family homes are now almost always rejected,” Philp was boasting.
“We should not be destroying much-needed family homes… Flats, including in very high blocks, are better suited to Croydon town centre and more central London areas, which is where many blocks of flats are being built at the moment,” Philp wrote, apparently blissfully unaware of the planning bomb Chancellor Hunt was just about to drop on him, Perry and the rest of the country.
Obviously, these very high blocks with hundreds of flats are only “better suited to Croydon town centre” when they’re not being developed in Purley by a shadowy offshore tax-avoidance business based in the British Virgin Islands, or when there’s a promise of a swimming pool refurbishment in the mix, and when they are enthusiastically supported by Perry and Philp.
If Hunt’s proposal is implemented, not only will Perry’s planning committee members not be able to stop the destruction of family homes by being converted into flats, but Croydon Council will also miss out on “planning obligations”, such as the payment of Community Infrastructure Levy, which they would usually receive when a house is demolished and replaced with flats.
Flat-footed: Mayor Perry has broken his promise on Purley Pool. Now he won’t answer questions about the flat developers or the Chancellor’s new scheme
CIL is designed to offset any harm caused by a development to a locality, such as increased pressure on school places and parking. In reality, CIL has become a developers’ bung to local authorities. Councils like Croydon often give the green light to developments but then never spend the CIL cash where it was intended for.
One of the frequent objections to development by residents’ associations based in and around Purley has been that CIL monies raised are never spent in Purley.
Now, thanks to Chancellor Hunt, there won’t be any CIL money at all from the family homes lost to flats.
Some property industry commentators have said that Hunt’s move risks placing more pressure on parking, schools and transport infrastructure, where the number of residents in a street could potentially double – and all outside local authority control or in contradiction of local planning policies.
Philp and Perry might get lucky because Hunt’s scheme is unlikely to appeal to many of the profit-hungry development firms that have plagued the borough in recent years as the Gross Development Value (ie. what they’d both be worth) of two flats converted out of a family home might not cover the Open Market Value of the donor house and the conversion costs.
Where the scheme will find fans is among those who will seek to convert their own houses, keeping a flat for themselves and releasing the other to the market.
Inside Croydon approached MP Philp and Mayor Perry and the council for a reaction to their Government’s intention to permit the destruction of family homes by replacing them with flats. And just like when we asked them to name the directors of the firm that they want to allow to build 245 flats in Purley town centre, there was no answer.
Read more: Council backs Purley Pool tax dodge by off-shore company
Read more: ‘Teetering on the edge’: Hunt does nothing for local councils
Read more: Tories warn residents: don’t dare complain about Purley pool
Read more: Millionaire pulls plug on Mayor Perry’s ‘big idea’ for Allders
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