Roden Gardens under threat from massive 5G phone tower – Inside Croydon

Residents who complain about development are often dismissed as “NIMBYS” – Not In My Back Yard. But residents on a council estate in Selhurst have raised legitimate concerns about plans for a massive telephone mast half the height of Nelson’s Column which a commercial developer wants to place right in their backyards.

Huge Presence: documents submitted to Croydon Council show how the mast will overhang neighboring houses

The planning application for this massive piece of 5G infrastructure at the back of Roden Gardens, nearly 80ft tall and with two-foot-wide dishes, was submitted to Croydon planners earlier this month.

The proposed tower, “Completely destroys the apartments next to where they want to build it and uses up valuable green space used by both residents and wildlife,” said one concerned resident. Inside Croydon.

They claim that because of the current rules of the planning system, many neighboring properties are unaware of the proposals, as only Roden Garden residents have received letters from Croydon Council.

But from the submitted diagrams, “As you can see, it will have a dominant impact on the entire locality,” according to the resident.

“Many of the residents of Roden Gardens are vulnerable and some cannot access the consultation documents due to language barriers,” they say.

Residents have until June 3 to lodge any objections to the mast, which would serve the O2 and Vodaphone networks.

The planning application was submitted on the assumption that the mast was “permitted development”, suggesting the developers do not believe they even need to be granted planning permission.

A previous planning application to increase the height of the masts at Tait Road by a further 27ft was rejected by the council’s planning department. “Council is of the view that the proposed mast does not constitute permitted development,” they wrote, as the height of the mast would exceed 20 meters from the ground.

Tait Road is the other side of the railway from Roden Gardens.

“The council must reject the Roden Gardens application for the same reason,” residents say.

The planning application states that “The proposed facility would replace the two ground towers Vodafone and VMO2 at Tait Road Industrial Estate which are to be removed to facilitate the redevelopment of this area as part of Network Rail’s planned rail improvement program at Selhurst Triangle . .”

However, Network Rail admitted last year that because it had not been allocated any funding by the Department for Transport, it was not going ahead with ‘CARS’ – the Croydon Area Redevelopment Scheme, aimed at unblocking the rail gridlock at Selhurst.

Industrial scale: the open space behind the Roden Gardens would be completely taken over by the mast development

“In the absence of any plans to progress the railway improvement programme, the planning application should be refused. There are no public plans to demolish the existing towers at Tait Road Industrial Estate.”

This is not the only detail that the applicants seem to have got seriously wrong. “The supporting documents do not mention that the company considered existing tall structures for the location of the mobile phone mast, there is no attempt to camouflage the structure and there is no evidence of the need for this mast to be located here,” the residents said . state.

“There are significant amounts of land owned by Network Rail, already industrial, which could be used if it is really necessary to build such a huge new structure to extend the mobile network in this area.”

And the residents say Inside Croydon: “Speaking to residents of Roden Gardens and the surrounding roads, we are receiving significant amounts of community support for objections to this ill-considered and inappropriate planning application.”

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