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
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
- 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
