A property developer who resigned from a company behind a controversial housing project in South Norwood is still a shareholder in the business, it has emerged, despite claiming she is “now nothing to do with the company”.

Serina Drake stepped down as a director of Greathall Ltd in December last year, just two months after the company won a 13-year legal battle to build on the Railway Buildings site next to Norwood Junction station.

Greathall Ltd’s attempts to build a mixed-use housing development on the site became Croydon’s longest-running planning saga, as Ms Drake and fellow director James Groux spent more than a decade and thousands of pounds in legal fees trying to evict mechanic Richard Hough from his long-standing Autoclutch garage.

Mr Hough was forced to leave the garage last October - two months before Ms Drake and Mr Groux resigned from the company, leaving Charlton-based building contractor Xhevat Lita as Greathall’s sole remaining director.

The company, led by Ms Drake and architect James Groux, bought the plot of land from Railtrack for £112,000 in 2002.
When the Croydon Guardian asked Ms Drake about her resignation in July, she said she was “now nothing to do with the company,” and that she had received no payment upon leaving the business.

But Companies House records show that Ms Drake in fact retains an interest in Greathall Limited. 

In August 2015, four months before resigning from Greathall, she became a director of LW Properties, which owns a 50 per cent stake in the development.

LW Properties, previously known as London Warehouses Ltd, was incorporated in November 1999 by Ms Drake’s father, Terrence Harold Wilkins.

In a 2009 letter to the Land Registry, Mr Wilkins said he was “and always [has] been a financial sleeping partner in Greathall Ltd”, after previously working with Mr Groux on the development of another former Railtrack site in Clapham in the 1990s. 

Mr Wilkins, who holds a 22 per cent stake in LW Properties, was disqualified from acting as a company director in 2013 for his conduct while at the helm of London Warehouses.
Neither Ms Drake nor Mr Wilkins could be reached for comment.

The other 50 per cent of Greathall – which amounts to one of the company’s shares – is owned by Mr Groux, who in July said he was still involved as an “architectural advisor” on the Railway Buildings project.

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Autoclutch owner Richard Hough 

Earlier this month the Croydon Guardian reported that Greathall had failed to pay more £10,000 in section 106 contributions to Croydon Council since planning permission for Railway Buildings was awarded in 2011.

Mr Lita was appointed as a director of Greathall in November 2013, two months after the company lodged papers with Croydon Council that would have seen a large swathe of the Station Road site sold to Access Building Contractors for £450,000.

A month before his appointment, Mr Lita registered a new company, Norwood Station Road Ltd, with Companies House.

During a May 2014 hearing at Croydon County Court to decide the fate of Mr Hough’s garage, Mr Groux said the sale contract Greathall and Access Building Contractors had been drawn up as the company “explored” options in difficult market conditions.

It later emerged the 2002 sale agreement with Railtrack stipulated no part of the land could be sold for 20 years.