A BEXLEY councillor has described plans for a major new housing development in Crayford as looking like “cottages on steroids”.

Councillor Melvin Seymour objected to proposals to build 30 flats at 74 Crayford Road, including four and five-storey structures, a basement car park and courtyard.

Developers A and R Partnership got a unanimous thumbs-up from Bexley Council’s planning committee at a meeting on January 16.

But non-committee member and Crayford ward Councillor Seymour made clear his strong opposition to the development, featuring a four-storey block facing the road, before it was approved.

He said: “The flats look like cottages on steroids. Whatever way you dress it up the two storey Victorian houses opposite are going to be facing these four storeys which I believe is overdevelopment.

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Marc and Andrea Pearey. 

“It will impinge on the skyline. Young families in Crayford can’t get their children into Crayford schools which I think is very worrying.

“This doesn’t help our aspiration of forging community spirit and this is a development too far.”

Residents living opposite the site in Crayford Road, which is dotted with derelict former industrial buildings, are also unhappy the plans have been given the go ahead.

Great-grandmother-of-three Jessie Porritt, 77, says the traffic on the busy road will only be made worse once the development, with 34 spaces for cars, goes ahead.

The retired Crayford station kiosk worker said of the plans: “They’re ugly and they’ve got no character to them.

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The entrance to the site from Crayford Road. 

“You won’t see anyone here with their windows open at the front – it’s not just the noise of the traffic but the smell of it.”

Fulltime mother-of-four Katie Beeson, 28, added: “It’s going to be quite polluted and there are not enough facilities in Crayford to keep up with the amount of people that are going to be living here.”

Andrea and Marc Pearey run the B.J. Miles body shop next door to the where the new flats will go.

Mrs Pearey said: “We know something needs to go there as it is an eyesore but we think we are going to be massively overlooked by all the balconies and windows.”

A and R Partnership is hoping to begin construction in three to four months.