Detail-lite: gone are the flashy CGIs of what they promise to build… with their Masterplan Framework, all Westfield are saying is that they want to build flats somewhere down there
CROYDON IN CRISIS: Getting rid of two-thirds of the retail space in the town centre and replacing it with flats is about all that execs from Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield were prepared to share to a council committee, reports our housing correspondent, BARRATT HOLMES
Better late than never, perhaps.
But there was a distinctly subdued, an almost “we’ve all been here before” reaction, to the lengthy presentation delivered at last week’s planning committee by executives and architects representing Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield over the long-delayed redevelopment of Croydon town centre.
Some 11 years since the first Croydon Partnership scheme was crashed through the council process with some haste and enthusiasm, this wasn’t a new planning application (the third, by our reckoning). Nor was this the new Masterplan for the town centre that was supposed to have been delivered in 2023.
This was something called a Masterplan Framework. It was lacking in detail because, well, Westfield said, they need to be flexible.
But wheras that first planning application sought in 2014 was granted permission for around 600 homes, this latest version is looking to develop 3,000 flats, mostly in tower blocks overlooking Wellesley Road or on the site where the Whitgift Centre stands today.
At a committee meeting last week, councillors criticised the outline plans for potentially turning Croydon into a “dormitory town”, and for a lack of detail, the absence of any worthwhile new jobs and no promises of public infrastructure.
Jason Perry, Croydon’s part-time Mayor and full-time cheerleader for big business and property developers, described it as “a significant milestone”.
But one of the councillors on the planning committee, who actually sat through the detail-lite presentation and waded through the pages of brightly-coloured sketches, called it all “underwhelming”.
Seen it all before: the 2025 planning committee proved a little world-weary at Westfield’s latest presentation. despite the urgings of chief planner Nicola Townsend
And that was from one of Perry’s Conservative Party council colleagues.
Westfield, after keeping Croydon waiting for 13 years, somehow seem to be anxious to get approval in principle for this sketchiest of outlines, as did the council’s highly paid and developer-friendly planning staff.
“Let’s crack on with it, ‘appen,” said Croydon’s councillor for Todmorden ward, the always on-message Ian Parker. Having already signed one significant blank cheque for a shady developer earlier in the evening, over the Purley retirement development, Parker appeared eager to get the council to sign up for yet more jam tomorrow. Or in 15 years, more likely.
This Masterplan Framework, the committee was told, is all based on a consultation that lasted barely a couple of weeks last November and which drew fewer than 300 attendees. That is a telling statistic of how the Croydon public (population: 390,000) has grown tired of the broken promises and unfulfilled blandishments, while our town centre has been left to rot by the multi-national developers. The people just don’t believe it any longer.
Town planning: a child was missing their building blocks for the URW ‘consultation’ held at the Whitgift Centre last year
Some might suggest that Westfield, and architects Allies and Morrison, had already drawn up most of this Framework, and the public consultation in November was just a lip-service exercise. Big business would never do such a thing, would they?
The consultantion exercise was held in what the council and their developer mates call The Urban Room, one of the increasing number of abandoned or vacant retail spaces to be found in the ghost town that is the Whitgift Centre. Many cardboard toilet rolls, much sticky-back plastic and a couple of pads of Post-It notes were used in the process.
But nowhere in the flexible framework presented in the Town Hall chamber last week could anyone find the swimming pool, the skating rink or the university campus which were requested during that brief consultation last year.
And there’s barely a trace of the temple to retail, the vast Westfield shopping centre which was promised when Boris Johnson helped the then Tory MP for the area, Gavin Barwell, unveil the plans in a special event held at the Fairfield Halls 13 years ago (when someone called Jason Perry was the council cabinet member in charge of development…), nor the one included in the second planning application in 2018.
“The applicant no longer seeks to develop a new shopping centre with new housing,” states the council planning team’s report, almost as an embarrassed aside. Paragraph 4.12 relates a reduction in “existing floorspace within Allders, Centrale and Whitgift Centre” from c1,900,000sqft to “c700,000-
1,000,000sqft of flexible retail and related uses”.
Somewhat belatedly – like by 20 years – Westfield and their new French owners have realised that the retail business has fundamentally changed. This latest sketch “framework” includes little more than one-third of the retail space that is currently available. Basically, URW want to turn the Whitgift Centre into flats. Thousands of flats.
Those were the days: Boris Johnson, when Mayor of London, came down to Croydon in 2013 to preside over the shot-gun marriage between Hammerson and Westfield
Now, the council planners’ report described this as “focusing on a more holistic mixed-use scheme which would reflect the highly sustainable location delivering a revitalised town centre, including retail and related town centre uses and a significant uplift in the quantum of residential homes, as well as new streets and open space”. You still with us?
The URW reps told the meeting that they “hoped” that a finished Masterplan will be brought forward by the end of 2025. The actual planning application for any of this? They did not commit to when that might be made.
“Building a new shopping centre would not be a viable scheme,” said the suit from Westfield.
But the lack of detail in the scheme presented before them worried some councillors. “Where’s the democratic oversight of a Masterplan that is evolving over the next 15, maybe 20 years?” asked Councillor Sean Fitzsimon, a Labour member of the committee.
“What’s the justification for that reduction in retail offer by two-thirds, when that would brng people in?” asked a Conservative councillor, the resolutely off-message Helen Redfern, who compared Croydon’s offer, and the proposals before her, unfavourably with what is available in Bromley.
“It’s not about quantum, it’s about quality,” according to the Westfield suit, sounding just a tad patronising.
Redfern referred to the development blight that has affected the town centre so badly, so many shops and businesses emptying out. “That vacancy has been produced by uncertainty,” Redfern said.
Flexible: the absence of detail is because the developers want to be able to change their plans over the next 15 to 20 years
Clive Fraser, a Labour councillor who works in the planning department of another London borough, was very sceptical of a Framework which aimed to removed two-thirds of the town centre’s retail space “without any detail about what’s to replace it”.
There was no pool, no university campus. “Where’s the vision here?” Fraser asked, suggesting that what risked being delivered based on the documents presented was “just a dormitory town for central London”.
Fraser said: “If you come forward just with more housing to replace that, I won’t endorse that.”
Tim Hurstwyn, the senior figure from URW at the presentation to the committee, conceded that parts of the Whitgift Centre site, for which his company has a responsibility as leaseholders, had been “behind hoardings for too long”. Parts of the centre, Hurstwyn said, were “obsolete”.
And the suits tried to emphasise how this was not a straightforward site, including multiple listed and heritage buildings. “The Almshouses were being built as The Merchant of Venice was being written.”
The Framework effectively sees the replacement of the Whitgift Centre with mostly housing, and Croydon town centre reduced from two shopping centres to just one, where Centrale is today. Although that, too, might be liable to some adjustment in due course, thanks to the flexible Framework.
Things are grim for the Whitgift Centre just now. There is a dedicated URW leasing team on site. “But it’s incredibly tough out there,” one of Hurstwyn’s colleagues admitted. For every new leasing, there’s two or three cancellations or tenants going out of business, they said.
Vision thing: Penny Cameron of URW
Contrast what was being said to the planning committee to the press release issued by URW the following morning, and duly parroted by Croydon’s piss-poor Mayor.
“The plan will transform the area into a vibrant, mixed-use destination including homes, shops, cultural venues and public spaces,” URW claimed.
“It will respond to urgent local housing needs through the creation of high-quality homes while protecting historic landmarks like the Whitgift Almshouses and the iconic frontages of Allders.”
Penny Cameron, URW’s head of development – or non-development as far as Croydon is concerned – has been struck by the “vision” thing. “Our vision for the North End Quarter is one that will revitalise Croydon’s town centre through a truly mixed use offer, while celebrating the area’s unique heritage. We are pleased to have this support from the council, allowing us to embark on next stage designs.”
Thursday night’s meeting provided URW with an endorsement, which they say, “helps to guide the long-term regeneration of the area over the next 10 to 15 years, and sets out 10 principles to transform the area… blah, blah, blah…waffle, piffle, waffle”.
The appointment of Allies and Morrison, who worked on previous versions of Westfield’s “vision” for Croydon, could be significant, as they have overseen the much-praised regeneration of the area around Kings Cross. They talk about “a deep understanding of how to create places, the importance of public realm, interactivity and connectivity from both a building and a human perspective”. Which would be nice.
Timeline of failure: URW are not trying to disguise the years of broken promises and failure to deliver in Croydon, as this frame from their presentation demonstrates
We’ll just have to wait and see, although as one of the planning committee members said, “Some of my residents, they were 30 or 40 when this was first brought forward. Now, they in their 50s, some in their 60s… some don’t think they will live long enough to see it ever happen.”
Mayor Perry issued a statement saying that, “This is a top priority for me.” So one of Perry’s 37 top priorities. Having been in on discussions with Barwell and Boris Johnson all those years ago, will Perry still be Mayor to see even the beginning of the demolition work necessary for the redevelopment?
Back at the planning meeting, some councillors recalled the previous vacuously empty promises made by previous leaders of the council, of 5,000, 6,000 and 7,000 jobs being created around the redevelopment. No one ever specified what those jobs might be. Were they all supposed to be shop assistants?
High-quality homes: have you ever heard of a developer offering to build low-quality homes?
“Designs don’t make jobs,” Councillor Fitzsimons said, highlighting that in the entire Masterplan Framework document, there is only two mentions of the word “jobs”.
“It has to develop employment, has to attract employers who need office buildings. It has to be a catalyst,” Fitzsimons pleaded.
Hurstwyn used the F word. Flexibility (what did you think we meant?). The Westfield scheme had been hard-hit by the double-whammy of Brexit and covid. “There isn’t the demand today for offices,” Hurstwyn said, in the knowledge that part of URW’s Masterplan Framework envisages turning three of the existing office towers above the Whitgift Centre into flats.
In details in the council planners’ report, they say that URW “have aspirations to exceed the site allocations for their site and deliver up to 3,000 homes”.
Among other “aspirations” mentioned are “Breathing new life into North End”, having throttled the life out of it since 2012; “Respecting its historic past”, whatever that is supposed to mean; “Wellesley Road softened, humanised, outward looking”; the curiously phrased “Stitching into existing streets and routes”; “A revitalised metropolitan town centre” (see “Breathing new life into North End” above); “A range of new public spaces”; and “A new residential community”.
Involving 3,000 new homes, that final aspiration might be regarded as a massive understatement.
Read more: Westfield wants to build five times as many flats in town centre
Read more: Westfield reveal consultation and more delays on ‘masterplan’
Read more: Westfield boss says Croydon scheme could take 15 more years
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
- 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
Allies and Morrison are masters in concrete, brick and boring sharp angular structures. Turning most of the Whitgift Centre this way will be a shame but I can’t imagine what both train stations are gonna be like in the morning. The population density and crime will also go through the roof if Westfield is ever completed .
Interestingly, when the developers were questioned by councillors about what they intended to try to do to “design out” crime in the Masterplan area, they said that such considerations were too detailed for this stage of the process…
Which is another way of saying that they hadn’t even considered it.
Some of the Southern metro lines are still only running two trains an hour, when in 2020, there were 4 trains an hour and services to Victoria as well as London Bridge. This despite traffic returning to 85% of what it was……..We are not well served by Southern, who are a contract not a franchise and therefore controlled by the Dept of Transport.
It’s time for a change in Croydon. Tell this company to “do one” and at the same time electors to stop voting for the same old Tory and Labour faces who’ve made a horrendous mess of the place over the last twenty years.
“The plan will transform the area into a vibrant, mixed-use destination including homes, shops, cultural venues and public spaces,” URW claimed.
At least they listed homes first on their list of the mixed-use functions of Central Croydon, but they were a bit vague about the proportions, which are probably 3,000 flats (“homes”), 2 or 3 shops, 1 (small) cultural venue and 0 to 1 “public space” overlooked by most of the 3,000 flats.
All very well having fewer ‘shops’ as long as they are high quality. But Westfield haven’t really demonstrated they are capable of attracting quality retail outlets to Croydon so far. Recent openings of Stacks and Beauty World are just underwhelming imho. I have no hope, the Westfield management team are just full of bullshit like Croydon Council
Back in 2011 or 2012 Gavin Barwell, then MP for Croydon Central, called a public meeting to discuss the plans for redevelopment of the Whitgift Centre. Members of the audience pointed out that, even at that stage, it was clear the demand for retail units was declining. The growth of online shopping and development of out-of-town shopping centres had seen to that.
However the politicians paid insufficient heed. With little imagination about what the new town centre should look like, and with even less power to influence things, they allowed Westfield and later URW to prevaricate and let the centre decline.
I was interested to see from the above article that the architects involved with the Kings Cross redevelopment have been appointed to work on the latest plans. Developments with a significant amount of housing can work, as has been shown by Kings Cross, and by the much earlier Barbican development. But there also need to be amenities for the increased population and cultural facilities.
It’s also important that any new housing contains a substantial proportion of council homes, which is what is needed most.
“a substantial proportion of council homes”? But Croydon Council couldn’t “organise a piss-up in a brewery” and certainly couldn’t be trusted to manage something important like housing, as the residents in the 20 or so LPS concrete blocks of flats in the borough would confirm !
Croydon had loads of ‘Master Plans’ which the town’s archiects were very proud of. Fat lot of good they were!
It still does – this Masterplan Framework slides in among three or four others, for Old Town and the Arts Quarter (oh! How we laffed) and so on.
The interesting thing with this is that the council’s planners appear to have passed the responsibility for this Masterplan (which is now two years late) to a private, commercial entity.
It must be the wet dream of Perry, the piss-poor Mayor and plastic guttering salesman.
No one can ‘attract quality retail’ because quality retailers aren’t interested in town centre developments. This has been proved over and over again. Those days are long gone and we all know it
Westfield Statford and Whitecity are absolutely rammed during weekends after lunch time. Sure some shops have boarded up and closed but you can barely walk after certain times. Perhaps your comment concerning “town centre developments” excludes Westfield developments but I urge you to go to the two above i mentioned
The government’s announcement today on commonhold could result in URW again redrafting their forever changing plans for the Whitgift Centre. The ability to fleece leaseholders with rip-off service charges and maintenance costs is coming to an end.
What’s disappointing is that while we have paid our council to produce Croydon Masterplans, these are ignored. Instead we are being led up the garden path by developers who don’t have our best interests at heart, with the unquestioning agreement of our Mayor and councillors
Common hold is a very welcome thing – given that Labour first announced it would be brought in in 1995 but didn’t do it and the useless Tories/libdems didn’t do it either. So here’s hoping for poor leaseholders. Agree it might frighten the horses at URW – no escalating ground rent for them if this goes through. But they can just ask more money for each flat I guess.
Westfield won’t be able to charge £2k service charge fees per month for a one bedroom flats after these new rules. Instead they will only be able to sell 1 bedroom flats for £1m which no one one with a brain would buy.
Just build the f*king shipping centre once and for all!
Sam: no one sensible thought building a massive shopping centre was a good idea when Barwell and Johnson backed it in 2012. It’s even less of a good idea now. That doesn’t excuse leaving what exists on the site to fester and decay, as they have done for the past 13 years.
After two decades of blight is that all there is. This commitment is so vague as to be effectively meaningless in practical terms. This project simply has not moved one bit since it failed a decade ago. The truth is staring everyone in the face. URW simply cannot deliver a large scale development and are still relying on vague illusory promises. They seem even unable to deliver the pods that are suppose to occupy the old Allders building.
It has really reached the point that smaller scale piecemeal development is the only way forward and the fantasy that has blighted Croydon for two decades is ditched. It may as well be done sooner or later as we slip into the third decade of blight that has decimated the area.
Now the intentions for the Whitgift area are clearer perhaps Perry will get the “About Croydon” section of the Council’s recruitment webpages updated. It looks like they have not been updated for about eight years. Much of the content is about regeneration is untruthful including the £30 million redevelopment of the Fairfield Halls.
Where is the water to come from and where is it to go? Where will the GPs come from to provide health care to the people who move in? Where will the children get their schooling? Where is the increased public transport for the people moving in as I doubt that there will be much car parking?
Mend the roof and turn it into a low rent pleasant village shopping center with a few large retailers.
If we had a ‘Green’ council, they’d insist on grey water collection systems, solar power and quinoa beds, so it would be sustainable
Look at Westfield’s Coppermaker Square in Stratford. 1 bedrooms go for £2500pm, 2 bed £3000pm , 3 bed £3500pm mean average. Using Saffron Square’s pricing of ground rent and service charges together; £6000 ( 1 bed) £8000 (2 bed) and £10k ( 3 bed) , Westfield North End’s 3000 apartment blocks should yield them around £100m per year. Easy money..something Croydon Council can’t deny them.
As for yr water comment? that probably gets recycled into the private swimming pools and spas as in Coppermaker Square. As for yr GP comment, Coppermaker Square residents get “exclusive access to 15-minute health checks, including postural assessments, food diary analysis, cardiovascular endurance tests”
Ooooh!
I don’t understand the Mayor whatsoever, he just constantly lies.
Even the day before the “Masterplan Framework” was coming out, he was brazenly calling it the “Masterplan”.
He’s now on multiple occasions stated that the planning application will come in 2025, when in fact he’ll be lucky if the “Masterplan” is done by then.
Council and planners would push through the Westfield scheme even if it was a block of 10,000 flats in the shape of Jo Negrini’s head. I fully expect this to be the final design when it is complete in 2084, the year Perry finally “fixes the finances”.
What a dystopian vision you present, Mr Johnson
Very nice, more low quality flats being built at sky high prices… the mantra today is build cheap sell for as much as you can and run.
Whole reason i stopped working on site expecting me to do crap work for top pay bo way pal, look at the flats in the middle of the roundabout their as cheap as can be, plastboard for a wall which doubles up as a wall to your neighbours flat
It’s an insult that this vague framework even made it to the committee. What are these cultural venues they speak of? I view it as a statement of intent of how much URW can take the absolute piss and how unfit most of the people on the planning committee are. Nicola Townsend needs her P45 for this. 3000 flats front and centre, Westfield were originally brought in for a reason and it wasn’t to be a housing developer. All they’ve done since is slowly squeeze the life and soul out of central Croydon. This plan has one aim, an attempt to make as much money as possible for URW. The chair, Neal, just a weird, clueless yes man needs replacing, sadly he’ll be there for the rest of this administration. A good replacement seems to be Fitzsimons, the only person who was asking truly pertinent questions and is able to see the big picture of the redevelopment of Croydon, something you would normally expect from a planning department.
To say this is underwhelming is an understatement, it offers no ambition or aspiration for the future of Croydon. I get the flats would make a lot of money for URW, but what is its USP for Croydon? Why would people actually come to visit Croydon based on this? The current path is just more skyscrapers, grow the population to half a million and beyond, give nothing to offer. Just off the top of my head it seems to me that the future is about creating sustainability, to just create a pleasant places with things to do that people want to visit and hang out in. Look at something like Burwood Brickworks, nothing vast, but green, sustainable, attractive, multipurpose. It can be interconnected with a greened up Wellesley Road and a greened up George Street, some grey to green, nothing too radical, quite achievable, that’s just about the visual, not the contents. Make that hypothetical walk from the train station to the centre a pleasant one that’s a bit different, particularly for urban London. Greenery has a calming effect and research has shown that more in an urban area can help lower crime. This grey concrete living we created for ourselves is actually quite odd when you think about it.
We are at a point where Gatwick Airport is about to be significantly expanded, East Croydon station might get developed in the future. We are in an incredible location between a major airport and one of the major cities of the world with one of the most used train stations in the country. I want a Croydon that is transformed, that people want to visit, not avoid. A place where people smile because of how it turns itself around, not a place where people frown and make a sarcastic joke when you say you come from Croydon. Central Croydon just feels like a blank slant at a crossroads and I don’t want it to blow it.
NO MORE flats…… less people please and decent shops !!!!!
If you want fewer people (please note the correct use of English), have you thought of assisting in that aim by moving away?
Many years ago I went ot Bradford with my other half that’s where he went to UNI and westfiled encouraged their council to allow them to demolish their old shoping centre to build a new one. The council agreed, Westfiled moved in demolished the shopping center along with lage chunks of the highstreet and left them with a massive hole for three years. Once construction was complete no shops wanted to move in because the shopping area was dead.
In away we in Croydon have suffered a similar fate, the council threw people out of Whitgift, let it rote all because Westfiled promised it would be in within so many months, months turned to years and here we are with a dead shopping centre and highstreet all because the Council believed in the shiny words of Westfield. We’ve been in this limbo for too long.
Im going to say I won’t believe it till I see it and until that happens. The situation is not helped by the fact the people in charge of the Whitgift centre are still cahrging maximum rent on a basically empty centre which means more and more smaller shops are going to close till there is only one shop left. Whebn Sainsburies moved out a store that had been in the centre for as long as I’ve been alive gave up the ghost you know things are bad.
What ever they do they need to do it soon before Croydon flat lines. (No pun intended). I’ve lived in croydon my entire life, grew up in the 80’s with the likes of Woolies, LittleWoods. I still remember when there were two Argos’s one in Chruch street the smaller one on London road down by West croydon station. I’ve watched the town change and slowly go down hill. I remember when a saturday the town center was packed with people now it’s a ghost town.
I avoid the town centre because it’s full of drinkers and preachers. It used to be nice to just wander around and grab a coffee or lunch. No more. The last time I met friends in Croydon (who used to work here), they were shocked.
Croydon needs vision and transformation and people who know what they’re doing. Kerswell, Perry and Director of Planning Heather Cheesborough have been given every opportunity (and millions in taxpayer funded salaries) but they have failed. For the good for Croydon they should step down now so we can bring in some real talent with a decent track record.