Polaska Assets, the firm behind Purley Pool's approved 220-unit rebuild, entered administration on 6 August, Gazette records show. What happens now.

The company behind the approved rebuild of Purley Pool has gone into administration. Administrators were appointed over Polaska Assets Limited on 6 August, according to a notice in The Gazette, the official public record.

The appointment was made in the High Court under case number CR-2026-006136. The administrators are Mark Boast and Allister Manson of Opus Restructuring LLP. One of the firm’s listed offices is on Park Lane in central Croydon.

The notice describes Polaska as a “non-trading property development vehicle”. The company is registered in the British Virgin Islands, at an address in Road Town, Tortola. Its entry on Companies House’s register of overseas entities, where it has been recorded since April 2024, now gives its address as care of Opus Restructuring in Milton Keynes.

Polaska is the developer and long-term leaseholder of the Purley Pool site at 50 High Street. Croydon Council agreed headline terms with the company in October 2023 to bring the pool back as part of a wider redevelopment.

What was approved

Purley Pool closed in March 2020 and has never reopened (Croydon Council). The rebuild was the route back: the leisure centre was to be handed to the council at a subsidised cost, funded by the housing built above and around it.

The council’s Planning Committee voted to grant the application, reference 24/00775/FUL, on 27 February 2025. Eight councillors voted in favour, none against, and two abstained.

According to the officer report, the approved scheme would demolish the leisure centre, the empty former supermarket and the 412-space multi-storey car park, and build four linked blocks of 5 to 12 storeys containing:

  • a 2,597 sq m leisure centre with a 25m six-lane pool, a training pool, a fitness studio, a gym of 80 to 100 stations, a café and a soft play area
  • an integrated retirement community of 220 units: a 40-room care facility, 57 extra care homes and 123 independent living homes
  • 10% of the homes as affordable (intermediate) housing
  • a new 78-space car park, a public square and a new route between the High Street and Whytecliffe Road South

The council would own the new leisure centre, with its contractor GLL lined up to run it (Croydon Council, January 2025). The loss of the 412-space car park drew substantial local objection, and officers recommended a condition keeping all 74 spaces not reserved for residents open to the public.

Timeline of the Purley Pool rebuild: the pool closes in March 2020, the council agrees terms with Polaska in October 2023, planning application 24/00775/FUL is submitted in March 2024, the Planning Committee grants it 8 votes to 0 on 27 February 2025, the Mayor announces on 23 December 2025 that the GLA will not intervene, and administrators are appointed over the developer on 6 August 2026.
Six years of the Purley Pool saga, ending in the High Court. Graphic by Croydon Today.

The scheme looked clear to proceed

The last two public milestones both pointed forwards. On 4 December 2025, Executive Mayor Jason Perry announced the application had been formally referred to the Greater London Authority for its final review, after what he called “productive progress over the last two weeks to complete the S106 agreement”.

On 23 December he announced the outcome: “the GLA will not be intervening in the application or directing us to refuse it”. The project, he said then, “remains on track”.

Seven and a half months later, the developer was in administration. The council has not published anything about it: nothing has appeared on its newsroom, and the Mayor’s 11 September column does not mention Purley.

What administration means here

Administration is a formal insolvency procedure, not automatically the end of a company or its projects. Control passes from the directors to the administrators, whose legal job is to rescue the company if they can, or otherwise to get a better result for creditors than an immediate winding up. They must send their proposals to creditors within eight weeks of appointment.

What that means for a consented but unbuilt scheme depends on what the administrators do with the company’s assets, including its long lease on the site and the planning permission attached to the land. None of that has been made public yet.

We have reported what the insolvency register records. Nothing here should be read as a statement about the conduct of the company or any individual.

What it means for you

  • The pool stays shut. Purley has been without its pool since March 2020, and the one route back that had planning consent now depends on an insolvency process.
  • The administrators’ proposals are the next fixed point. Their statement to creditors, due within eight weeks of the 6 August appointment, should show whether the company is to be rescued or its assets sold.
  • The council owes residents an update. Its most recent public statements on Purley Pool, from December 2025, describe a project on track. We have found no public council response to the administration and will report one when it comes.
  • Planning history for the site is searchable via our Croydon planning applications guide, and our planning news page follows the borough’s big schemes.

Sources