Shirley Heath, Addington Hills and the threat that never actually existed.
The last week has been a classic example of how a small group of people can create a large amount of worry and concern in a very short space of time about an issue that was simply never going to happen.
The subject? The Addington Golf Club’s plans to build a driving range and associated works on Shirley Heath and Addington Hills.
Let me start by being very clear. This plan was NEVER going to happen.
No-one at the Council or indeed any elected politician in Croydon has ever backed it for a second. As the Council owns the land that means it wasn’t going to happen.
It is however, election season, so some people spotted an opportunity to stir things up for their own benefit.
Let me run through where this all came from.
About a year ago The Addington Golf Club contacted the Council and the Executive Mayor. They wanted to discuss their plans for the Club and how they saw an opportunity to make the Club bigger and more attractive as a major golf venue. They are a business and coming up with ideas for improvements and growth are exactly what you would expect and want from them.
These type of meetings take place between lots of local businesses and the Mayor and Council on a regular basis. The Mayor’s door is always open for anyone’s plans to improve Croydon and rightly so. The devil is always though, in the detail.
The Club’s plans involved using land that is currently public green space. In a Borough with a population the size of Croydon’s and after Covid made us all much more appreciative of the amazing and varied parks, woodlands and heaths we enjoy, a proposal of this nature was unlikely to win public favour and never likely to be approved and the Club were told this.
Now some people have queried why this was not made public at the time.
It’s a good question but the answer is quite simple: no-ones ideas are made public!
Anyone can come to the Council to discuss their development plans or potential planning applications and do so in confidence; this is an absolutely necessary part of the process. Such things only move into the public arena when a formal application is made or the applicant chooses to engage with the public on the issue. Imagine you went to the Council yourself because you were considering building an extension, you want to ask questions about how big it can be and any potential issues. The Council doesn’t write to your neighbours the next day to tell them you’ve been in! Businesses and residents alike are free to speak to the Council in confidence.
The Addington Golf Club chose to try and move forward with their scheme by engaging with local residents associations and went public with their plan. This was poorly judged and subsequent events have clearly demonstrated that the initial feedback they were given on likely public opinion was accurate. Local residents want their green spaces protected.
This is where the politics stepped in.
Peter Underwood, the Green Party Candidate for the upcoming GLA Elections in Croydon saw an opportunity!
He could have phoned me - we know each other - and asked if there was any risk. I oversee asset disposal at the Council and am a local Councillor for the area. He didn’t.
Did he ask the Mayor about it? No.
Did he email Council officers? No.
The FIRST thing he did was to start a petition citing the ‘threat’ to local green spaces and using careful wording to try and suggest that the Council was considering the idea or indeed complicit it in being brought forward.
If he had actually spoken to anyone he would have known right from the start that this plan was never going to be approved and there was in fact, no threat.
But that doesn’t get you 5000 email address you can use though does it?
No; this was an opportunity to overstate the issue and subsequently present himself as having ‘saved’ the land from a plan that was never going to happen.
So desperate are some people that, even after statements came out confirming that the Council wasn’t selling the land to the Club, words were being twisted and people were saying that we therefore hadn’t denied we might be leasing it. Just to be clear - we’re not doing that either.
Shirley Hills is an important place in my life, we had our wedding reception at the Chinese restaurant there and our wedding photos were taken there as well. I will protect that area as long as I have breath!
Politics is a brutal and partisan space which often does not serve our residents in the best way. I’ve even seen people asking if the Mayor is a member of the Club (he isn’t) or has had gifts from them (he hasn’t) – all of these suggestions from political activists!
For the residents, what you need to be assured of is this.
It isn’t going to happen. It never was.
I celebrate the care and concern that our residents have for our precious green spaces but I wholeheartedly condemn the cynical manipulation of those feelings by the Croydon Greens for their own political ends.
I’m going to be up on Shirley Heath soon attending a local community event. There will be no driving range, no water storage pool and no golf course. There may however, be the odd stray golf ball.
Cllr Jason Cummings, Ward Cllr Shirley South and Cabinet Member for Finance
