By October 1945, the Council launched its development plans for the next 50 years.  As well as the Civic Centre, plans now included a greatly widened Wellesley Road and Park Lane with an underpass underneath George Street, a flyover across High Street and Old Town to Duppas Hill, a new bus station, car parks and many new office buildings funded by private development.

Although this was modified, it led firstly to a Town Planning Scheme, then to the Croydon Development Plan of 1951. In 1954, the Government ended building restrictions, setting off an office building boom in the South East, encouraging the movement of businesses and workers out of central London. To avoid more delay, a private Bill was promoted in parliament and became the Croydon Corporation Act of 1956. Initial progress on redevelopment was slow due to the continuing shortage of men, materials and money.

Building materials and styles had changed since the war as the shortage of steel and  emergence of concrete as an alternative led architects to look at new ways of construction.  Slabs could be poured onsite and a lot of facing panels were made of precast concrete in out-of-town factories and transported easily by road or rail and assembled on site.  Brutalist features such as visible construction materials and unusual formations of window arrangement and external decoration became the signs of a new phase of Croydon’s development.

Initial work started on the eastern side of Wellesley Road and Park Lane on the site of the former Public Halls and the eastern part of George Street. Building lines were pushed back to widen the roads and office developments included Norfolk House in 1959 followed by Suffolk House and Essex House. This area became known as Little East Anglia.  

Norfolk House, designed by Howell and Brooks, was the first tall building to be built in Croydon, with an 11-storey block and lower 7, 4 and 2 storeys running around this central core from Wellesley Road to George Street. It comprised a wide range of shops at street level. Key features are angled windows in chevron pattern at the first-floor level and light brick cladding.  

Suffolk House was built in association with Essex House by Raglan Squire and partners in 1960 to 1961 as part of the first generation of office buildings.  Suffolk House is 4 storeys, with black marble sill-bands and curtain walling. It has splayed corners which were a planning requirement and were condemned by the Croydon Advertiser as “destroying the rectangular shape of the building”.  Essex House, was an 11-storey slab, tapered at both ends, standing on a podium with an inner courtyard.  Initially, it was notable for the green colour of its curtain walling; but this gradually faded and the building was empty by 1991 and demolished in 1998.  A recent 44-floor housing development, Ten Degrees, now stands on this site and is currently Croydon’s tallest building.