Plans to demolish a former Royal British Legion club in Croydon and replace it with homes have been approved, but not everybody is happy.

In 2020, the Royal British Legion on 1268A London Road, Norbury, closed permanently.

In 2022, Centro Planning Consultancy applied to Croydon Council to demolish the disused building and build a five-storey building with 20 homes and use the ground floor for a community space.

Of those homes, 40 per cent will have three bedrooms and overlook Norbury Park.

At a meeting chaired by Cllr Michael Neal and held on Thursday (July 25), the majority of Croydon Council’s Planning Committee agreed to let the demolition go ahead.

Aaron Zimmerman, director at Centro Planning Consultancy, said: “This is an above-and-beyond offer and we believe this to be a meaningful benefit in the context of a challenging viable environment.”

Mr Zimmerman added: “The existing Royal British Legion building has been confirmed to be surplus for requirements, unfit for purpose, and a clear underutilisation of previously developed brownfield sites.”

Mr Zimmerman said that the ground floor would be used for a nursery, saying: “The development will provide a more usual community usability in the form of a children’s nursery and adult place space."

He said it would go from a “very highly unusable space to a very high-quality usable space”.

Cllr Leila Ben-Hassel spoke on behalf of Norbury Village Residents’ Association and objected to the plans.

She said: “The whole community was saddened by the closure of the Royal British Legion Club in 2020 which was used by many residents.

“Everyone agrees that this is a prime site of housing redevelopment, but we feel that better opportunities to use the site have been missed.”

She felt the plan wasn’t high-quality enough and felt the standards should be much higher.

The proposal plans for the community spaces to be “sandwiched” between bin stores and bike stands, she said. 

Cllr Ben-Hassel said: “We expect people will be loitering rather than parking their bikes there, contributing to the anti-social behaviour we already experience.”

Planning officers said they saw the provision of 20 residential homes as an acceptable development and understood the objections made by the Residents’ Association about the anti-social behaviour.

The proposal also plans for each flat to have full-height windows.

Cllr Sean Fitzsimons said: “We need housing, and this is a good site and I do not have any concerns about the design.

“But I have worked in housing for over 30 years and planners insist on these full-height windows to get light into these bedrooms which they say residents will never use.

“But when residents move in there, they try to devise ways to stop people looking into their windows, so they use papers and then the building looks even worse.”

Cllr Ian Parker said: “We do have a new government that is committed to 1.5 million homes and that is something you might want to take into account.”

The grant was approved by the planning committee with eight members in favour, and only two against.