We’ve been here before: the council is pretending to have a part in the re-design of the town centre
Patronising and puerile, the council’s latest attempt to “engage” the public has reached a new low, even by the subterranean standards of Fisher’s Folly.
The cash-strapped council is now trying to pretend it is doing something about the state of the town centre, after more than a decade of developer blight inflicted by Westfield.
The public survey bit has just a couple of days left to run (it closes after barely a month on February 28; they wouldn’t want to give the public too long and risk finding out what you really think).
But anyone who bothers to look for it will find that it appears to have been cobbled together by someone who has just watched a bit of children’s telly and seen a cityscape created from an old washing-up liquid bottle and some “sticky-back plastic”.
The whole charade – “get involved in a range of activities to learn and have fun while helping to shape plans for the future of the town centre”, according to our council – will be familiar to many in Croydon, and not just those who have just watched an episode of Blue Peter.
‘North End Quarter’: all the rebranding in the world won’t matter until Westfield decide what it is that they want to do
Westfield, then as the “Croydon Partnership”, put us through a similar sham about 12 years ago.
But then they actually bothered to spend some money (not very much, but much more than is being spent on the latest bit of nonsense), with stalls in the town centre, a few branded freebies to give away, and PR staff to fill out forms and tick the boxes for you.
This time around, the engagement budget looks to be about one-tenth of what was spent then. But this new exercise is a 100% match for the lack of honesty.
“Through surveys and workshops for adults and for young people, residents are invited to share their views on priorities for the town centre and what they would like to see in the future,” Croydon Council said at the time of the exercise’s launch in January.
The reality is that it doesn’t matter one iota what you, or your neighbour, or your elected councillors, or even the elected Mayor, piss-poor Jason Perry, thinks. The only thing that matters is Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield’s profits, and what they decide they want to do with their “development pipeline”.
Westfield have already declared that anything that they end up inflicting on Croydon town centre – where in 2012 they promised a £1.4billion shopping mall, cafés, bars and restaurants, a multiplex and loads of new flats would be completed by 2017 – won’t be revealed until 2025 at the earliest, and that they probably won’t finish the project now until 2038. And then it’ll be mainly flats. Lots of ’em.
So any of that scrunched-up tissue paper and washing-up liquid bottle towers that have been made at Turf Projects over the past few weeks has only really ever been fit for the recycling bin…
Patronising?: part of the council-funded ‘fun’ online engagement exercise
“Residents can be kept up to date and details of all activities can be found on the Croydon Urban Room website,” according to an over-excitable member of the council’s propaganda department, referring to another long-vacant retail space in Centrale or the Whitgift Centre that is being used for a low-grade publicity stunt.
They are now calling North End the “North End Quarter”… “Through conversations, stories, exhibitions and events, the Urban Room will bring together the views of those who live, work and visit the area to develop clear priorities for a plan to steer the town centre’s recovery.” And then ignore them.
Mayor Perry has a collection of at least half a dozen “top priorities”, and the dire state of the town centre is just one of them.
“Improving our town centre for everyone who lives, works, studies and visits Croydon is a top priority for me, and to make sure we get it right it is essential we understand what people think is important and want to see,” he is supposed to have said.
If you have two hours to waste at the behest of the borough’s useless Mayor and the cash-strapped council, you can be patronised by their survey by clicking here.
Read more: Hammer blow for Whitgift Centre with new delay to masterplan
Read more: What will the ‘new’ Westfield deal really mean for Croydon?
Read more: Westfield begins ‘cover-up’ at Allders – with pop art hoardings
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
FREE ADS: Paid-up subscribers to Inside Croydon qualify for a free ad for their business, residents’ association or community group, just one of the benefits of being part of our online community. For more information about being an iC subscriber, click here for our Patreon page
PAID ADS: To advertise your services or products to our near 10,000 weekday visitors to the site, which is featured on Google News Showcase and followed by 16,000 on Twitter/X, email us inside.croydon@btinternet.com for our unbeatable ad rates
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
- Our comments section on every report provides all readers with an immediate “right of reply” on all our content. Our comments policy can be read by clicking here
- Inside Croydon works together with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, as well as BBC London News and ITV London
