Appendix 6 - About the proposal sites

The Croydon Local Plan 2018 sets out Croydon Council's proposed sites for new homes, new primary and secondary schools, new healthcare facilities, new Gypsy and Traveller pitches and Creative and Cultural Industries Enterprise Centres and also land to be safeguarded for transport improvements in the borough.
This appendix explains the factors that were taken into consideration when assessing possible proposal sites in the borough. The proposal sites were identified from the following sources:

The Call for Sites that took place in February 2012 and February 2014;
The Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment prepared by the Mayor of London in 2013;
Planning permissions and records of pre-application advice; and
Sites identified by Council officers as having potential for development.

Each site was considered for different uses. As each different land use has different needs the factors that were taken into consideration are looked at in turn starting below with housing.

New homes

In assessing each site the basic criteria that were considered were as follows:

Is the site big enough for 10 or more new homes;
Are there any existing or proposed policy constraints that would prevent the development of the site altogether;
Is the existing land use protected from development unless certain criteria are met (such as demonstrating lack of demand for an industrial premises or community use);
Are there any factors that would prevent the site being developed (such as legal covenants or viability issues); and
Could better use be made of the site for another use such as a new school based on the criteria in the following paragraphs?

New primary schools

There were five principal criteria when assessing whether or not a site was suitable for a new primary school. These were:

The site must be big enough (with 0.25ha being the smallest site a new primary school could be built on);
The site must be in an area with an identified need for new primary school classes;
The existing land use is not protected;
There are no policy constraints that would prevent the development of the site altogether; and
There are no known factors that prevent the site being developed.

Not every area of the borough has a need for new primary school classes beyond 2017. Only the North West, Centre and South West have been identified as needing more classrooms that will require the construction of a new primary school. The remaining areas of the borough (the North East, the East and the South East), either do not have any need for new classrooms or the need is small enough to be accommodated through the expansion of existing primary schools.

New secondary schools

The assessment criteria for secondary schools were similar to primary schools, the main differences being the size of the site required and that secondary school places are required across the borough. The minimum site size for a new secondary school is 1.1ha.

New healthcare facilities

The Council has worked with NHS England, the Croydon Commissioning Group, the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust, the Croydon University Hospital NHS Trust, the London Healthy Urban Development Unit and NHS Property Services to identify sites that would be suitable for new healthcare facilities and are in areas of demand.

Sites for Gypsy and Traveller pitches

Gypsy and Traveller pitches are initially considered in the same way as a site for housing as in planning terms it is the same use of land. However, new Gypsy and Traveller pitches have their own specific requirements as well which were:

The site must be big enough for three pitches (with 0.15ha being the minimum site size required for three new pitches); and
The site should have no existing buildings (on the grounds that it would not be viable to demolish existing buildings and replace them with Gypsy and Traveller pitches), or the existing building could be used to provide an amenity block for new pitches.

Creative and Cultural Industries Enterprise Centres

The Croydon Local Plan 2018 sets out in Policy SP3.3 that it will create a network of Creative and Cultural Industries Enterprise Centres with one each in Croydon Metropolitan Centre, Crystal Palace, Purley and South Norwood/Portland Road. Sites in these locations have been considered as potential locations for a Creative and Cultural Industries Centre where there is an existing policy designation protecting the existing use, but where the site could be realistically used to support creative and cultural industries in the borough.

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