128 Foxley Lane, Purley: Bid to Drop 5 Affordable Flats

The owner of a Purley development site wants to build its 16 approved flats with no affordable homes, instead of the five it agreed to provide.

The site is 128 Foxley Lane, CR8 3NE. Croydon granted permission in January 2025 to knock down the house there and put up a three-and-a-half-storey block of 16 flats (24/00563/FUL). The new application, validated on 21 October, asks the council to rewrite that permission (26/02848/CONR).

Residents can comment until Saturday 14 November.

What the owner is asking for

The planning agent’s covering letter sets out two changes (covering letter, 6 October):

• No affordable flats on site. The existing Section 106 agreement requires 35% affordable housing, which the letter says “equates to 5 units”. It also requires an off-site payment of £84,397.
• Two extra side windows. The approved drawings left two bedrooms on the second and third floors with no window. The letter calls that “an error on the drawings”.

The two documents filed with the application do not agree on the off-site payment.

• The affordable housing statement says “an 80k off site affordable contribution will still be payable”.
• The covering letter says the viability assessment shows the scheme cannot provide “any on site affordable or off-site contribution”.

Why the owner says it cannot provide them

The letter says the site was meant to be built alongside Moat Homes’ development of 41 flats next door at No. 126. In 2022 Moat agreed terms to buy No. 128 too, and the plan was for 100% affordable housing.

The letter blames “lengthy delays in the determination of the application” for what happened next. The council refused the first application in February 2023. The owner appealed, and the inspector dismissed it in December 2023 on out-of-date ecology information alone. The current permission followed in January 2025. By then, Moat had largely built No. 126 and “were unable to proceed with the sale”, the letter says.

After that, according to the letter:

• Croydon Churches Housing Association agreed terms, and in February an application went in to make the scheme 100% affordable. The association withdrew a month later.
• The council’s own affordable housing team said in June that it could not take the scheme on.
• A viability assessment by Grimshaw Consulting concluded the flats cannot be built with on-site affordable housing.

The letter says an independent review by Carter Jonas reached the same view. The applicant has not seen that review, the letter says. Its account of what it found comes from council officers’ emails.

Has the council already agreed?

Not formally. A 22 September email from a council planning officer, attached to the letter, says a minor amendment “was only suitable if the scheme was going to 100% affordable not a decrease to 0”. Officers asked for a full Section 73 application instead, and this is it.

The letter also cites an earlier appeal at 20-24 Mayday Road, Thornton Heath. There, an inspector allowed a 57-home scheme to cut its affordable housing to zero through the same kind of application.

No decision is due before the comment period closes. The council’s target date is 20 January 2027.

What it means for you

• To comment, go to application 26/02848/CONR on the council’s planning register and choose “Comments”. The deadline is 14 November.
• Comments on viability count. Planning officers weigh the viability evidence. London Plan policy H5 sets a 35% affordable threshold for schemes of ten homes or more.
• The flats themselves are already approved. This application is about who the homes are for and two windows, not whether the block is built.

More Purley planning decisions are on our Croydon planning applications page.