Merry Croydon Christmas: the Westfield-run Whitgift Centre this week, less than 14 shopping days to Christmas, with more buckets than customers. Mayor Perry is ‘working with’ Westfield, while blocking off customer access to the centre
Businesses struggling for survival in the long-neglected Whitgift Centre say they are enduring their worst Christmas trading season in 25 years
The closure of the Wellesley Road pedestrian subway has entered a second week, with potential customers blocked off from accessing shops in the Whitgift Centre just before Christmas, and traders kept in the dark about when this important access point and emergency exit might re-open, if at all.
There is speculation that the council wants to close the underpass permanently, which would make it even more difficult for potential customers to reach the few shops and businesses that remain in the long-neglected shopping centre.
“Zero communication about it to us or our neighbours of course as premises directly affected,” according to one trader who contacted Inside Croydon, who said that the underpass was their main fire exit route for mobility-impaired visitors.
Croydon town centre’s network of pedestrian underpasses, a legacy of the 1960s development of a shopping mall, a six-lane urban motorway and the Croydon Flyover, have presented town planners and the police with growing dilemmas in recent years, as they have turned into crime hot-spots and have been used by the street homeless for refuge.
No way through: the barriers to the pedestrian subway went up at the end of last week
The council has already blocked off pedestrian subways near East Croydon Station, as Town Hall sources suggest that Mayor Jason Perry has determined to remove the underpasses as a night-time option for the homeless.
The subway under Altyre Road was blocked in the summer because it “attracted repeated antisocial behaviour”, the council said, adding that it became a “disused and unsafe site”, and referred to “an unauthorised encampment” which led to “further antisocial behaviour”.
The Wellesley Road subway appears to be heading for a similar fate, with some suggestion that there had been a fire there, too, recently.
“Office workers who bought from us on the way home or on their lunch break now no longer have any reason or route to go through, it’s brought our small footfall down to nothing,” one of the Whitgift Centre traders said as the closure has blocked them off from their customers.
“The only people we get in coming past now is people who don’t realise that it’s closed yet.”
Another said: “We were assured just last month that the underpass wasn’t going to be closed. And yet here we are just before Christmas, with nobody going past at all.
“We’ve been here 25 years and this is one of the worst seasons we’ve had.”
Other businesses based in the Whitgift Centre say that they are not opposed to a closure of the subway: “We just expected that there might be at least a conversation about it first, some notice, and a safe crossing installed at ground level on Wellesley Road first.”
To make a bad situation worse, another of the entrances to the Whitgift Centre, by the bus stop, remains closed months after it was boarded up following a car crashing into it.
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, as featured on Google News Showcase, 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
As featured on Google News Showcase
- 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 is a member of the Independent Community News Network
- Inside Croydon works together with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, as well as BBC London News and ITV London
ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2024, Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for a SEVENTH successive year in the annual round-up of civic cock-ups in Private Eye magazine
This is insane. I don’t use the the Wellesley Road subway often but I was discovered the closure walking home from East Croydon station (having exited via the central station bridge) thinking I might look around the shops in case I found anything nice to buy. Once at the subway, it is hard to find any alternative route without walking to one of the junctions – a long alternative. I almost feel like the council wants the town to deteriorate. They certainly are achieving that objective if no others.
Sadly, walking through the underpass recently has become a worse experience than going the long way round, homeless encampments and the smell of urine and what looks like human faeces a common feature. It is well past time they were closed and filled.
As for the whitgift centre itself, I am amazed it’s still open at all, most of the decent retailers have left, only a matter of time I reckon before Marks and Sparks pulls the plug in favour of it’s Purley Way store.
Parking prices are quite frankly extortionate since they changed management. A major Croydon employer recently moved closer to East Croydon Station and the walk to the centre for lunch is now less viable as takes more than 30 mins to go there and grab food and get back, I expect traffic will be massively reduced there now.
So the Mayor is a supporter of business?
It never seems to be any of the businesses who are trying to make a go of things in the Whitgift Centre. It is shocking how they have been treated.
Perry rushed permission quickly through for those kiosks at the old Allders building on behalf of the property developers.
It must have a chance of opening within the next decade at least. Not in time for this Festive Season as the hype he provided gave the impression at the time.
As per my previous piece on this subject…the idea that the people in charge of this debacle should have our confidence in any of their development plans is increasingly risible.
I am very sorry, to hear, that they are closing witgify centre, i hope they build, new shopping centre, woth 12 floor, more shops, and more security guards, that brins more employment.
Well said!
Pop up shops in Allders. As a resident of Croydon, I am fed up seeing pots and pans, suitcases etc. We want decent shops in Croydon.
We used to have decent shops and could have again if Croydon was imaginative enough to reintroduce free parking Sundays
At least half the kiosks – note Westfield’s choice of word – in Allders will be fast food joints, Alice. So more fried chicken…
What a debacle of a once proud shopping centre that was once in the top 10 in the country
It all started with the greedy on street parking charges in the 1990s and looks like it will end with the incompetence of disaster mayor Perry
So the Bridge to Nowhere strikes again. Nowhere on the east side and now Bugger All on the west due to this subway being closed. Pretty much makes Wellesley Rd Tram stop redundant.