Little opposition to Croydon’s £1bn Hammersfield wet dream

insidecroydon

12 years ago

It’s the billion pound question about Croydon’s future but WALTER CRONXITE has discovered ahead of next week’s Town Hall elections that there’s near-unanimity between the major parties over the redevelopment of the town centre by Westfield and Hammerson

Issue No2: HAMMERSFIELD

THE ISSUE: The Whitgift Centre is tired and fading, and its major land-owners, the Whitgift Foundation, urgently need to revitalise their income from retail, office and housing on the town centre site.

Almost none of the borough’s established politicians, of whatever hue, and few of those who’d relish the chance of a seat at the Town Hall, have much to say against the developers’ scheme. Yet many of the crucial details – especially the Transport for London review of traffic schemes linked to the development, including major re-workings of Purley Cross, Fiveway and the tram system – have yet to be properly laid out for scrutiny.

But then, who wants to “scare off” £1 billion-worth of investment and the (noticeably vague) promise of 5,000 jobs?

THE BACKGROUND: The people running Croydon Council, of the left or right, have had a disastrous record over the past three decades in delivering major schemes in the centre of town: the failed Croydon Arena project, the still-undeveloped “Croydon Gateway”, now re-branded the Ruskin Square site, Cherry Orchard Gardens and even the Menta site and the “Bridge to Nowhere” debacle at East Croydon are all testimony to our local authority’s inability to deliver.

Will Hammersfield be any different?

How Westfield imagine Wellesley Road might look, with towers of apartments, looking like a Costa del Croydon according to some

The Whitgift Foundation, with strong connections to Tory politicians on the council and at Westminster, owns large tracts of commercial property, including the ageing Whitgift Centre shopping centre. A year ago, Boris Johnson stepped in to broker a deal so that the Hammerson-owned Centrale on the other side of North End should be redeveloped together with the Whitgift property, with Conservative Party donors Westfield handling much of the scheme. It has all the hallmarks of a multi-billion-buck developer’s wet dream.

Planning permissions have been nodded through with alacrity by our Town Hall and City Hall representatives, who are in complete thrall to the interests of developers.

Few disagree that Something Must Be Done with our town centre. But a Temple to the Great God Retail? Another multiplex cinema? Is that it?

In the planning permissions, Croydon Council’s Tory administration has ignored its own planning policy and the borough’s housing crisis by failing to insist on at least 30 per cent of the new homes in the development should be “affordable” (which under current government guidelines, in Croydon terms, means £1,000 rent per month instead of £1,200…). Council leader Mike Fisher claims that if the 30 per cent threshold had been enforced – meaning providing 180 affordable flats, instead of fewer than 90 – Westfield will have walked away from the whole scheme. Is that in any way believable?

The Tories are now relying on scare tactics in their election campaign. They have even circulated an image of the proposed Hammersfield development and seriously suggested that this website is part of an elaborate Labour plot that might threaten the scheme. Oh, puhleeze…

THE 2014 CROYDON MANIFESTO PROMISES:

Conservative: The Croydon Tories don’t have a borough-wide manifesto. They claim the credit for the Hammersfield scheme, and now they want to get their snouts in the trough for the next four years without the pesky socialists getting in the way. Errr, that’s the sum and substance of their pitch to be re-elected on May 22. Trebles all round!
Labour: A tad more critical of the scheme than the Tories, but only just. There’s chance that if Labour are elected, they will insist on a more planned approach to the development, to assist district centres in the borough and to deliver more meaningful social amenity benefits, but the scheme is now so far down the planning process, there’s a limit to what could be achieved.
LibDems: They say that they back the scheme (no shit, Sherlock!), but want binding planning agreements on social amenities to be provided by the developers. Might be a bit late for that though.
UKIP: As UKIP does not have a party whip, even if they do manage to get a handful of councillors elected to the Town Hall, once there they are free to vote as they wish. So anything they promise now is virtually worthless. UKIP backs the scheme.
Greens: “Current administration panders to developers – investment needs to made that benefits the people,” they say. “What is in Westfield for local traders? It’ll be full of chains. What’s in it for local people?”

INSIDE CROYDON’S ELECTION VERDICT: The merged Whitgift Centre and Centrale will be re-developed. They will have lots of shops, bars and restaurants, some offices and flats. Ho hum.

As retail sales shift ever more to online, the operating lifespan of the new centre will be shortened. Thanks to the current Conservative-run council’s fawning approach to all developers – and some significant suggestions of conflicts of interests – Hammersfield will probably come to be regarded as a significant missed opportunity for this part of south London.

For more background on the issues around the Hammersfield redevelopment, view our archive of reports here

Inside Croydon’s recent coverage of the local elections:

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