The deadline for responding to consultation on Croydon’s Local Plan has been extended until Monday, 20 January.
The Plan divides the borough into 16 “places”. This is to enable engagement and consultation with communities that would be sensitive to local sensibilities. The ECCO area is included in two of these places – Central and Addiscombe.
There has been pressure upon Croydon for the last two decades to provide more housing. It was originally expected that the town centre and periphery areas would be able to satisfy that demand. However, this demand has doubled to over 40,000 housing units, and the council how has to look to outer areas to meet that demand. The search for suitable sites in these areas has run into extensive opposition and not delivered enough space to meet the target.
| Housing sites identified in & near the ECCO area | ||
| Proposal | Location | Observation |
| Central Place | ||
| Residential led mixed development | 1-5 Addiscombe Rd (former Royal Mail sorting office) | Planning permission received by Hyde Housing. Now belongs to Network Rail. |
| Residential, office and / or hotel | 20-28 Addiscombe Road | Currently Go Ahead House & Easy Hotel |
| Residential development | 44-60 Cherry Orchard Rd | Cherryfields site. Has received planning permission |
| Mixed use residential with offices, restaurant / café, hotel | Cherry Orchard Road | Menta have already started work on this site. |
| Residential development | 30 – 38 Addiscombe Rd | L&Q have already got planning permission for housing development |
| Residential and / or office | Stephenson House & Knolly House | This is also identified as potential primary school |
| Addiscombe Place | ||
| Suburban evolution through Infill | Colson, Blake, Brickfield, Bisenden and Chisholm Roads | Could result in existing houses being replace by blocks of flats. |
| Residential development | 130 Oval Road | Between 10 to 57 homes. |
Between 877 and 1448 new homes are proposed in the ECCO area and the adjacent south side of Addiscombe Road. In comparison, the rest of Addiscombe Place is scheduled to have only between 41 to 181 new homes, over a much wider area.
The ECCO area is required again to carry a significant burden of development with no obvious benefit for the local communities.
- There has never been any investment into the Cherry Orchard Road (and adjacent Lower Addiscombe Road) retail area that is comparable with the sums from the Council’s general fund that has been spent on the Addiscombe shopping parade.
- There is no public open space in the ECCO area. The existing Oval Road green will be largely incorporated within the Menta development and the Ark Oval Playing Fields are expensive to access. Trees on the Addiscombe Road Boulevard are not being replaced after they are cut down. The adjacent Little Road Playground is identified as Green Space to be protected by the Local Plan, but not to the same the extent as open spaces such as Addiscombe Railway Park.
- The streets between Addiscombe Road and Cedar road have been identified as an area of “suburban evolution through infill”. This may lead to the construction of blocks of flats, fundamentally changing the nature of the area, from which the vast majority of Addiscombe Place is exempt.
The ECCO steering group believe that the ECCO area should not be included in Addiscombe Place and that the challenges it faces on the periphery of Central Croydon be recognised and responded to.
Click here to have your say about plans for Central Croydon Place https://getinvolved.uk.engagementhq.com/CentralCroydon
Click here to have your say about plans for Addiscombe Place
https://getinvolved.uk.engagementhq.com/Addiscombe
East Croydon Community Organisation 