Mayor Jason Perry and Croydon Conservatives believe our Green Belt is sacrosanct. We will fight Sadiq Khan’s proposals to build on it and do all we can to protect it for future generations. Will Croydon’s Labour MPs stand with us?
At a public meeting in 2014, Sarah Jones said:
“We need to be brave and build in places people might not want us to.”
Now Khan’s Draft London Plan puts Croydon’s Green Belt in the frame for thousands of new homes. It sets a ten-year housing target of 21,544 homes for the borough, including 5,600 on greenfield land, and identifies Croydon–New Addington as a Green Belt location for growth.
Jones’s words show an appetite for building where residents do not want it. More than a decade later, her Labour Mayor is proposing exactly the sort of approach that worried people in Croydon then.
We need more homes, including affordable homes. But City Hall’s own figures identify capacity for 15,944 homes on brownfield land in Croydon. The priority should be to get stalled schemes moving, build homes that already have permission and regenerate land that has been developed before. The Green Belt should not be the answer when building elsewhere proves difficult.
Cllr Jeet Bains, Cabinet Member for Planning and Regulatory Services, has written to Jones and Croydon East MP Natasha Irons calling on them to oppose the proposals. Irons previously served as Merton Council’s Cabinet Member responsible for green spaces. Both MPs now have the chance to show whether they will defend Croydon’s Green Belt when doing so means standing up to their own party’s Mayor.
As Cllr Bains told Jones: “Croydon’s Green Belt is not a convenient land bank for City Hall.”
Jason Perry and Croydon Conservatives will fight to protect it. Sarah Jones and Natasha Irons should say plainly whether they will join us.
