Yet another family home and garden in Purley is threatened with demolition, this time in Graham Road off Higher Drive. The proposal is for five houses to replace an elegant Edwardian home which has an attractive gable facing onto the street.
If you wish to comment on this planning application , please send an email to [email protected] quoting reference 21/03344/FUL no later than 4th August 2021.
For information, this is what I've written:
I object to this application for the following reasons:
- Design: The design is spectacularly in breach of CLP policy DM10.1 which requires new development to:
- “Respect the development pattern, layout and siting,
- Scale, height, massing and density
- Appearance, existing materials and built and natural features of the surrounding area.”
The new design consists of five houses in a mini cul-de-sac; there are no comparable designs anywhere near this site, so it completely fails to respect the development pattern and layout of the street, and the scale, height, massing and density are also completely out of character. This home is an attractive Edwardian design with a particularly interesting gable and was apparently the first house to be built in the road, so it is cultural vandalism that such an attractive home should be destroyed to make way for five small houses.
- Overdevelopment: This proposal constitutes over-development and intensification of the site, with five new homes being squeezed into the space currently occupied by a single family home.
- Bin store: The D&A document implies that the bin store will be located very close to the road; if so, then by definition, it’s a long way away from the two houses at the rear of the site, which are also uphill from the road. I’m concerned that residents will have great difficulty moving the bins from the road to their houses, even when they’re empty.
- Cumulative Impact: Policy DM10 states that the Council “will take account of cumulative impact”, and applies to the whole of the Place of Purley. Over the last 30 months, planning permission is under active consideration or has already been granted for about 70 individual homes to be replaced by about 400 new flats, and other largescale developments in the Purley district centre are contributing another 750 flats. This totals about 1150 homes which is over 50% of the annual requirement for new homes for the WHOLE OF CROYDON. If this does not constitute cumulative impact, then what does?
- Infrastructure: I’m concerned about the impact that such intensive development of Purley is already causing on the local health & education services, given the total absence of infrastructure investment which all seems to go elsewhere in the borough. The delays for appointments in local surgeries get ever longer; despite a 4000 signature petition, the Purley Leisure Centre will not re-open this year, if ever, and the Purley Oaks Children’s centre is currently threatened with closure.
(ENDS)
