16 replies to this topic

[fungigirl]

Just letting people know Priory School, Hermitage Road and Virgo Fidelis between them want to remove 72 trees from the school grounds and Convent Wood, also the proposed building looks like an industrial unit. If looking at the plans, Virgo's plans also need to be read at the same time as the access road through Priory School is linked to the Virgo Development.

Priory: http://planning.croy...ystemkey=132078

Virgo: http://planning.croy...ystemkey=118329


There is an Environmental Impact Assessment for the Priory that implies that removing 18 trees and associated shrubbery will have no impact on the flora and fauna!! (The other 54 trees are being removed by Virgo, these are not taken in account in the Priory assessment.)

http://planning.croy...ystemkey=132042

Please have a look and see what you think.

[colinf]

Virgo Fidelis is locally listed by Croydon BC.
This means that although its not a "protected" building falling under the purvue of English Heritage, its heritage character is a material consideration in any planning application. Virgo Fidelis appear to have kept true to the original designs until now, as far as I can see. Its hard to see from the application documents exactly where this building is. I presume that this 6-storey development does not impinge upon views of the historic site, (with its links to Lord Thurlow's estate) the buildings or its curtilage?

PS: how old are the trees under threat? Native woodland species that are older than 150-200 years mostly predate the main development of this area and may have comprised the original Great North Wood that gave this area its name. They are important relics.
FYI we have several pockets of survivors around West Norwood and Sydenham, there are more than a dozen in W Norwood Cemetery - the oldest has been dated to about 1600AD.

Edited by colinf, 05 May 2012 - 10:51 PM.

[colinf]

I've looked more at the application. I see your concern about the loss of green amenity.
The orignal outline planning permission was granted for a different scheme. There are several grounds to seek to get it modified.

- Environment :
Document 48580_8.pdf states that Croydon's policies require any development should have a statement justifiying the loss of trees, and on ecological impact caused by removing trees, and that any trees removed must be replaced by new planting. Their bat survey (48580_3.pdf - now 6 years old) also recommends the provision of a "Green corridor" for ecology and other surveys for wildlife. I don't see any provision for this. (I note that the desk-based surveys also fail to note some other nearby sites of ecological importance, specifically West Norwood Cemetery which sits in Lambeth, which they rate as as "Grade I" site.)

Document 48580_3.pdf (describes as bat survey, but in reality a much broder report) notes the importance to Croydon of policy SP8, which seeks to place a high value on the protection of tress,etc. (and seek public access to these resources (e.g. Convent Wood?) It also notes acouple of very relevant policies:
Policy NC1 says to seek an Environmental Assessment where Nature conservation will be affected.
Policy NC3 requires the importance of a development to outweigh featues of nature conservation interest
It also noted that the survey was done at a bad time for recording species, although there were signs of badgers and potential for stag beetles - protected species. Licences will be needed for work in the area of their setts. It recommended seasonal monitoring for badgers, reptiles and bats. Tree #1, a mature oak, on the south of site A, was singled out for attention.
As 6 years has passed it should not be unreasonable to ask for the report to be updated.

The Council's legal tests did not require an Environmental Impact Assessment. However, this would seem to be counter to policies NC1 & NC3, assuming they still hold.

- Impact on neighbouring borough:
Document 48580_1.pdf directs all the traffic from this new estate onto Central Hill and thus impacts Lambeth's roads (possibly TfL as well) I see no consideration of this impact. Perhaps this would be something that you could raise with Lambeth Planning, as it will be Lambeth who will have to pay for the disruption that this development will cause. Similarly, the failure to provide a green corridor will adversely affect the ecology in Lambeth.
Yet any Section 106 money raised from this development appears to be directed at Croydon.

[RetiredMember2]

The Virgo Fidelis application is to build four/five storey building with basement parking comprising 4 one bedroom, 26 two bedroom and 2 three bedroom flats; erection of 7 three bedroom three storey terraced houses;formation of vehicular access and provision of associated parking and cycle bays. This will sit well with Croydon council as it has earmarked 800 new homes to be built in the Upper Norwood area and the only land left to build on is green space.

(I note that although Croydon seek to expand this areas' residential quota it does not propose any increase or improvement to our already groaning infrastructure. Indeed Croydon council seeks to reduce public services to this area -see UNJL debacle - at the same time as it sets out policies to meet it's housing targets by building on this edge of borough area - probably hoping that Lambeth, Bromley or Southwark will pick up the pieces).

Croydon's Core Strategy framework sets out a presumption in favour of the development of new homes as long as they meet the requirements of Policy CS2 and other applicable policies of the development plan. A case could be made around the fact that this application does not comply with policy CS2.2 as destroying the ancient woodland to make way for housing fails to protect the brough's physical, natural and historic environment.

"CS2.2
In order to provide a choice of housing for people in Croydon the Council will seek to deliver a minimum of 13,300 homes between 2011 and 2021 in line with London Plan target for new homes. Between 2021 and 2031 it will seek to deliver a further 6,900 homes9 . Therefore, overall, the Council will seek to deliver 20,200 homes10 over the plan period (2011 - 2031). This will be achieved by: a) Concentrating development in the places with the most capacity to accommodate new homes whilst respecting the local distinctiveness of the places and protecting the borough’s physical, natural and historic environment;"

It would also be worth looking at the new National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) that has replaced the old Planning Policy Statement 9 (PPS9) that covered protection of biodiversity and geological conservation. The following sections of NPPF are aimed at conserving and enhancing the natural environment and this application clearly does neither:

NPPF 109. The planning system should contribute to and enhance the natural and local environment by:

●● protecting and enhancing valued landscapes, geological conservation interests and soils;
●● recognising the wider benefits of ecosystem services;
●● minimising impacts on biodiversity and providing net gains in biodiversity where possible, contributing to the Government’s commitment to halt the overall decline in biodiversity, including by establishing coherent ecological networks that are more resilient to current and future pressures;
●● preventing both new and existing development from contributing to or being put at unacceptable risk from, or being adversely affected by unacceptable levels of soil, air, water or noise pollution or land instability; and
●● remediating and mitigating despoiled, degraded, derelict, contaminated and unstable land, where appropriate.

NPPF 114. Local planning authorities should:
●● set out a strategic approach in their Local Plans, planning positively for the creation, protection, enhancement and management of networks of biodiversity and green infrastructure;

As well as making individual objections I would reccomend getting in touch with local amenity groups such as the CPCA http://www.cpca.org.uk/ and Norwood Society http://www.norwoodsociety.co.uk/ who will be able to notify their members as well as submit objections to these schemes.

The Priory School app is for the demolition of existing buildings; erection of three storey secondary special needs school to provide suitable accommodation for up to 132 pupils with severe and complex learning difficulties and associated access road, vehicle drop off and collection area, hard and soft landscaping. This will be much harder to resist as it involves building on an existing site and the creation of a new school.

Edited by citizen M, 07 May 2012 - 09:50 AM.

[Andy]

What I cant understand here is that Virgo Fidelis is firstly a School and a Church, so why are they suddenly now playing at property development. Its not like they need all these new flats for educational purposes is it. I also did see somewhere that they want to put in a leisure centre / swimming pool, but dont seem to want the public to use it. It all seems very short term, and looks like they need a cash injection for another building project in the pipeline.

[colinf]

More specifically, Virgo Fidelis is run as two charities. (See CharitiesCommission website, search under "Virgo")
This development must meet their charitable objectives of spreading religion and providing education.

[fungigirl]

Thank you for all your comments, I have used parts of them in my objection.

If anyone else would like to object please do as it will help our cause no end. If you mention things like there will be an extra 59 parked cars in the local streets as well as the building does not fit in with the surrounding area due to its siting and mass. Also the loss of so many. mature English Oaks.

Thank you

[unlimitedpower]

Threat to ancient Woodland and 3 storey building


Dear Hermitage residents and surrounding areas,


A meeting will be held at Phoneix Centre on Wednesday 6^th June 2012 from 7.30pm – 9pm with Cllr Pat Ryan, Cllr John Wentworth, Cllr Alisa Flemming and Adrian Dennis, Town planning and environmental consultant, with regards to the planning application for Priory School, Hermitage Road.

A petition would be around if you wish to sign.

We look forward to seeing you there.

BW,

Residents Hermitage Road

[fungigirl]

Please come and sign the petition if you can. Thank you.

[RetiredMember1]

Let us know if there's an online one, won't you, fungigirl?

[kibitzer]

Anyone know what happened at the meeting on 6th June about this planning application?

[fungigirl]

About 45 people turned up, Pat Ryan (local Councilor) asked us all to state what we objected to and is going to pass these on to the relevant people. He also said to get the local papers involved, one of the objectors is sorting this out.

There was a chap with Pat Ryan who used to be the Chief Planning Officer for Croydon (can't remember his name) who said looking at the documents it looks like a done deal!!!! He also stated the documents were very misleading where it showed what the the building would look like in situ as it was the same height as the housing next door. The other thing he pointed out was that a tree survey had not been carried out and this is one of the things that shoud have been done as a matter of course. The are no notices posted outside the building, this is why no one knew this was happening.

There is another meeting next Tuesday at the Conquering Hero Pub, 7:30 I think.

Pat Ryan also said when he asked the planning office for copies of the the documents they would not give them to him he had to print them off himself!

[unlimitedpower]

Hi Everyone

Just find out that the next meeting will be held at Priory School, Hermitage road on Wednesday 12th June 2012 from 7pm – 9pm with Cllr Pat Ryan, Linda Wright Head of Inclusion, James Orchard Programme Manager-Buildings with regards to the planning application for Priory School, Hermitage Road.

A petition would be around if you wish to sign.
Please let everyone know

Just realized I made a mistake with day of the meeting as 12th of June is Tuesday instead of Wednesday.
Apologies.

[kibitzer]

Thanks for the update.

[Undecided]

The plans will lead to suffocation and death of the ancient woodlands. The housing development, the new road and the school play area will lead to significant destruction of ancient mature trees, associated vegetation and wildlife. The play area separates the woodlands adjoining the Hermitage road from the other parts of the woodlands. So there could be further developments in the separated woodland area bordering Hermitage Road.

If Virgo Fidelis convent is not able to maintain the ancient woodlands, they should give up the ownership of the woodland rather than selling of the land to property developers to make money.

Edited by Undecided, 14 June 2012 - 08:32 PM.