Legal & General receive green light to turn Nestlé's Croydon HQ into flats

“@croydonx: The Laffer Curve ( the 70% bit ) varies from study to study. Some say 50% is best, and we brought in the 50p rate.

As for France? Only the mobile rich can leave. The rich that are tied to France by their jobs and that obviously can't leave. Don't fall for The Tory hype on this one. A study of Barclays bank showed that only 10% of the top-paid could up and leave. The next 45% could leave with some difficulty, but that is where we change the Tax laws to stop. The last 45% are stuck here.

So 90% of The Rich can DEFINITELY be taxed.

The French may well make mistakes. But we, the British Left, can learn from those mistakes. In the same way we learned through Blair's experiments that Thatcherite policies are so bad they are beyond repair and must simply be abandoned.”

“@croydonx:

Yes, Labour did Privatise the Town Centre carparks. Like many Blairite policies it failed. We're a lot smarter now.


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Only 20% at the most are affordable. So the low-paid of Croydon, once again, will not be able to use these new homes to get themselves a better life.

These priorities being let through by The Torys are terrible.

It's obvious the only focus is private profit and 'getting in new better people'. Which I find DEEPLY offensive. You have people here already. In fact our population in Croydon is, well, we're close to full-to-bursting. Why not invest in helping The Locals?

But, sadly, all these Torys want to do is abandon the locals and not help them. Every policy they roll out to do with our City Centre shows this. It's clear as crystal.

So what will we be left with? A huge stack of flats sitting empty that no-one can afford. Does that sound like a success story to you?

Or just a massive waste of space?

Don't forget we also have Ruskin Square and the Menta Tower going up as well. Croydon City Centre is to be flooded with a huge pile of flats that are, well, mostly unaffordable to The Locals. Oh dear...”

“I also agree but didn't good old Labour flog all the car parks off to make a fast buck without any kind of clue whether this represented good value for the public purse? or even made basic financial sense in the face of the declining tax revenue you see if you allow a 3rd party to price shoppers, and hence a large amount of wider economic activity, out of the borough.

Still, keeping even half the eye needed on the financial viability of one of their hair brained 'initiatives' to avoid going completely bankrupt has never been one of Labour's strong points... all those PFI contracts killing the NHS, the 'end of boom and bust' from the banks they declared on their regulatory watch, the final nail in the coffin of good pension schemes we had when they grabbed the dividend tax credit etc etc

Still I'm sure they'll promise to fix it all with a 70% tax rate when they get back into power, that's working well in France... not.”

“@aggiepaggie - totally agree, I reckon that is one of the biggest complaints that I hear about Croydon, the cost of parking. When I talk about the shopping centre the vast majority of people that I speak to tell me that they avoid Croydon because (1) parking is too expensive, (2) it is a bit of a dump and (3) there are no decent shops.

It would be interesting to hear what the plans are for parking when the new shopping centre is built. My understanding is that most of the council car parks have been sold or subcontracted to NCP (not sure which) so they are trying to make a profit, hence why they are all empty now.

The simple fact is that to encourage shoppers to a town centre, you need to offer free and convenient parking, the whole model is currently wrong.

Regarding this article, I think the term iconic is heavily overused these days, everything seems to be iconic. Lets be honest, building flats is the quickest way for L&G to raise cash and get the building off their hands. The key question is how much will the flats cost. If as I expect that are expensive I wonder how exactly you are going to attract wealthy people to live on a main road, overlooking a run down St Georges Walk, next to a 1960s shopping centre. The only plus is transport links to London.

As part of overall regeneration it has to be positive, but my cynical nature can't help but look beyond the corporate and political soundbites.”

“This maybe great but the fact that any parking in central Croydon for shoppers is overcharged, will not help Croydon to regenerate. Last night I wanted to pop in to Argos and the nearest car parking was charging £3.80 from 6pm to 6am. I refused to pay this ridiculous amount for what would have been 15 mins, and left without going to Argos. I will go to Purley way, if need be.

Wake up Croydon council, Stratford Westfield gives up to 2 hours of free parking and obvious it attracts visitors, while Croydon shops keep closing down.”