Demolition in New Addington

New Addington sits about five miles south-east of Croydon, right up against the Surrey boundary, on a plateau of its own. The ward recorded 10,801 residents at the 2011 census, with 22,280 across the New Addington and Fieldway built-up area.

It was built as a single project rather than growing outward. The First National Housing Trust bought 569 acres in 1935 for a garden village of 4,400 homes; 1,023 houses and 23 shops were up by 1939 when the war stopped work, and Croydon added a further 1,412 by 1968, which is how Fieldway became its own estate.

Some of the earliest houses were prefabricated — corrugated cement asbestos panels on a bolted steel frame — before being replaced with brick two-storey homes in the 1960s. If you are in an older property and think there may be asbestos-containing material in it, tell us: that is not something we will move without knowing about it first, and it changes how the job is planned.

The estate was historically isolated enough that residents nicknamed it Little Siberia, with limited road access and patchy buses until Tramlink route 3 arrived in 2000. Access is better now, but it is still a plateau with few ways on and off, so we scope a job here properly and clear it in one visit rather than making repeat trips.