Town Hall reporter KEN LEE on how the increasingly secretive Labour council appears to have something to hide over the future of the town centre’s long-delayed redevelopment
Shady: what is Tony Newman trying to hide?
Croydon Council is trying to keep secret the contents of a letter sent to Tony Newman, the leader of the Labour-controlled council, regarding plans for the £1.4billion redevelopment of the town centre.
So desperate has Newman’s council become to keep under wraps the full contents of a letter sent from developers Unibail-Rodamco Westfield that they have now taken to breaking the law to maintain their cover-up.
Newman received the letter from the developers at the end of March. It was in response to growing concerns about the latest delay to the work on demolishing and redeveloping the Whitgift Centre, a scheme which Westfield, together with Croydon Partners Hammerson, have been promising to get underway since 2012.
Earlier this year, however, Westfield and Hammerson announced that the scheme had been stalled once more, while they conduct a “review” of their proposals (another one), against the backdrop of the troubled retail sector and the impact of Brexit. No deadline for when the review might be concluded has ever been disclosed, and no new start date for the development announced.
On March 25, Newman tweeted a message, typically garbled, accompanied by some images of sections of a letter from the shopping mall developers.
Tantalisingly, Newman’s pictures provided some of the developers’ message.
But only piecemeal, and incomplete.
We quote from Newman’s gibberish tweet here, verbatim:
“Welcome letter re our next meeting from @urw_group stating Westfields clear commitment to & @yourcroydon as a ‘flagship scheme for the company’ in terms of timing letter recognises ‘Brexit Uncertainty’ & challenges re the UK ‘political outlook’.”
From what Newman allowed to be seen of the letter, it actually offers little more than the platitudes and lukewarm assurances that were issued in February, when the company announced their “review”.
There is a scrap of a sentence, seen in the selective images, which refers to business rates, which suggests that the private developers may be seeking further assistance from the public sector, perhaps with some undertakings over rate rebates.
Newman’s tweet from March 25. He has since refused to release the full text of the letter
But Newman and Croydon Council have never published the complete text of the Unibail-Rodamco Westfield letter. This has led to the growing suspicion that the full message, far from being optimistic encouragement, as portrayed by Newman, includes some less cheery news.
“The developers have kept the people of Croydon, local businesses and the council dancing to their own tune for seven years now, all on the promise of ‘jam tomorrow’,” one Katharine Street source told Inside Croydon. “All they have caused, in fact, is development blight right through the town centre.
“If this latest letter of apparent reassurance about their intentions is sincere and as promising as Tony Newman has tried to make out, why hasn’t he published it in full?”
A request for the full text of the letter was made to Croydon Council on March 30.
Under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act, Croydon Council was obliged by law to release the letter before the end of April.
Yet by today, and despite two reminders, Newman’s council has refused to release the Unibail-Rodamco Westfield letter.
“There’s plenty of precedent to show that, as a public authority, the council cannot claim commercial confidentiality in correspondence such as this,” the source said. “Indeed, it would be a very flimsy excuse indeed if the council tried to withhold the letter on that premise.
“This is a major scheme, affecting the lives and businesses of tens of thousands of people in this borough. There’s a clear public interest in publishing the letter.”
Withholding information from the people of Croydon also breaks one of Newman’s own manifesto promises made in 2014.
Then, when seeking residents’ votes in Town Hall elections against a backdrop of eight years of a Tory administration which had kept secret the £100million overspend on the council’s new offices, and repeat investigations into allegations of corrupt procurement practices by the then council deputy CEO, Newman boldly announced that he would “blow open the books” when Labour was elected.
Croydon has had more plenty of closing down sales since Westfield announced their plans for the town
That promise has never been kept.
Before those 2014 elections, Newman even made a manifesto promise of making Croydon “the most open and transparent” council in the borough’s history.
Keeping Unibail-Rodamco Westfield’s March letter top secret is neither open nor transparent.
What is utterly transparent, however, is the crisis on Britain’s high streets, undermining Westfield and Hammerson’s business plans for generating rents from retailers which would make a commercial success of any Croydon supermall.
According to figures published today by the British Retail Consortium, 1 in 10 shops in Britain’s town centres are empty.
The BRC’s national town centre vacancy rate has climbed to a four-year high of 10.2 per cent last month. The vacancy rate has risen in each of the last four quarters and is now higher than at any time since 2015.
This has prompted the BRC to speak in terms of “struggling high streets… trapped in a downward spiral”.
Helen Dickinson, the BRC’s chief executive, said, “Empty shopfronts, particularly for larger stores, can deter shoppers from an area. This effect can be cyclical, with the long-term decline in footfall pushing up vacancy rates, particularly in poorer areas.”
Centrale, the Croydon shopping centre operated by Hammerson which was to form part of the £1.4billion redevelopment of the town centre, has recently been hit by the administration or voluntary arrangements required by department stores Debenhams and House of Fraser, once more reducing the prospect of profitable rents on which their business depends.
As The Guardian reports today, “A growing number of retailers, struggling as sales shift online, are scaling back their physical stores as high rents, coupled with rising business rates and payroll costs, make them unprofitable. The situation is made worse by dwindling shopper numbers.”
And this, it could be added, creates a business environment in Croydon’s retail centre which makes any false optimism over the prospects for Hammersfield redevelopment put out from council leader Newman seem deeply irresponsible.
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The worse case scenario is that they finally start knocking down the whitgift centre and then decide it’s not viable leaving a gaping hole in the middle of Croydon. Which will end up being more luxury flats and a Starbucks with, if we’re lucky, a Tesco express thrown in
They did that in Bradford, left a hole in the ground for 10 years I believe.
We’ve been warning about Bradford’s Wastefield since 2012…
https://insidecroydon.com/2012/07/15/mary-portas-westfield-bradford-and-a-1bn-hole-in-the-ground/
What’s another year? In the long run we are all not here, but Tony Newman’s words will always be trapped in the electronic ether.
http://news.croydon.gov.uk/compulsory-purchase-orders-served-to-secure-remaining-whitgift-land-and-interests/
What does it really say; sorry guv we aint coming ?
It’s probably a ransom note – give us your borough or we shoot the shopping centre…
Im afraid it is hard to think anything other than negative thoughts over Westfield Croydon. Much as I have always defended the development, I now think that there is the perfect storm to prevent it happening in anything like its original proposal.
A damage limitation programme must now commence as soon as humanly possible. Whitgift must be demolished and unfortunately boatloads of flats will/must be built to fill the void. Hopefully they can build some attractive offices, a hotel, restaurants and a much smaller shopping centre that will work with Centrale to at least give Croydon a half decent amount of shops in a modern setting.
None of this is ideal but Croydon needs to move on. Shopping Centres world wide are struggling, we might as well thank our lucky stars they havent built a huge new complex with a low uptake of shops.
Its not too late for Croydon/ Croydon Council to make sure that a vibrant new Croydon can be built to suit modern demands.
The realisation has been a while coming, David. But rather than gloat, we’d ask you a question: who would pay for any redevelopment now?
They should give up on the likes of M&S and John Lewis and try to attract a wide range of small shops that can offer a unique choice of goods and personal service that are not available online.
None of whom would generate the kind of turnover that would support the rents that Westfield expects to charge.
True, but how much rent will John Lewis be prepared to pay on a shop with no customers?
The information we’ve had, and reported a year ago, is that they have been offered perhaps five years rent-free, on the basis that the presence of John Lewis will lure in shoppers for other tenants in the centre. If it is ever built.
https://insidecroydon.com/2018/05/31/westfield-finally-clinch-john-lewis-deal-for-1-4bn-development/
In other news Amazon and other online retailers decide to move onto the high street and the people of Croydon choose to pick their own shopping up
John Lewis already have a shop in Croydon on the Purley Way. Is Croydon that affluent that we can support two? And how many bus drivers will wait while you get your new three piece suite on the bus?
No, Pete. Go back through our archive and you’ll find that the masterplan is for the Westfield to have a John Lewis and Waitrose as an anchor store, meaning that the Waitrose on George Street and JLP store on the Purley Way would then close.