More buckets than businesses: Johnny Dobbyn struggled to find a way in, and the a way out of the desolate Whitgift Centre
Finding your way around the desolate maze that the Whitgift Centre has become has been made much more difficult since the shopping centre’s managers started blocking off entrances and removing staircases. It’s almost as if no one is welcome to visit their MP’s constituency office.
But as JOHNNY DOBBYN discovered, as the final contributor to be sent off on this quest, at least Sarah Jones’s local party has finally taken the hint and corrected their own address on their own website (see right)
The brief couldn’t have been simpler: venture into the Heart of Darkness – aka the Whitgift Centre – and find the office of Sarah Jones, MP for Croydon West.
I hadn’t been anywhere near the shopping centre for more than a year. Although I had been told on a Croydon Insider podcast it’s “more buckets than businesses” these days. So armed with no more than an address from the Croydon Labour website, I set off for the black hole that Westfield and the council have created in the middle of our town.
On entering the retailing dystopia, one is aways shocked by the devastation wrought on this once great mercantile centre, and the destruction of wealth, employment and prosperity presided over by the Whitgift Foundation, Westfield (or whoever owns it now) and the council.
Film star: Johnny Dobbyn on the set of the Dawn of the Dead remake. Possibly
Given the headlong exodus of rents from the place, you wonder why no attempt has been made to sell it as an epic apocalyptic film set. It would be ideal for another remake of George A Romero’s classic shopping mall zombie horror Dawn of the Dead.
The first barrier to finding anything was that there is no signage anywhere. Of any kind. For anything.
Guessing that “The Management Suite” mentioned in the address on the website would be in the tower block looming over WH Smith at the southern end of the centre, I wandered around looking for a way in.
I couldn’t find one – anywhere that might lead to it was closed off.
Actually, many of the accesses throughout the centre seemed to closed. Escalators were gated, stairs were barred, often by the grey curtains fixed to the ceilings and doors were chained up and entrances barricaded.
If it is this hard enough to find a way in or up, you have to wonder how hard it might be to evacuate the building in the event of a fire or other disaster, especially for those unfamiliar with the (much revised) layout of the centre.
I was left with little alternative than to seek advice from security – provided by staff in hi-viz from the £5billion facilities and services contractor Mitie.
Here I encountered a second problem: no one knew what I was talking about.
The first security person I spoke to had no idea that the MP was based in the centre, let alone the HQ of Croydon Labour. He was good enough though to jump on his walkie-talkie and seek advice from a colleague. The feedback from the cackling squawk box was that the offices were there but in a “restricted area”, and, even if the guy knew where it was (he didn’t), he wasn’t allowed to tell me.
Dripping with irony: the Whitgift Centre’s recently departed Superdry has its own leak buckets now, too
A Mitie colleague of my new friend mooched up, and we had the same “never heard of it” conversation. The first guard informed his colleague that, although he’d never heard of it either, they couldn’t tell me about it. It was like the early CIA scene in Apocalypse Now: “Sir, I am unaware of any such office… nor would I be disposed to discuss such an office if it did, in fact, exist, sir.”
Finally, a supervisor rocked up wanting to know why I was there and what I wanted. I showed him the address – gleaned from Croydon Labour’s website – only to be told it was incorrect, and that the offices are on Level 3, and not Level 2. It seems that someone at Croydon Labour has finally taken the hint and has this week corrected their own address on their own website.
Still, it seemed like a glimmer of hope. Here we go, I thought.
But no. For security reasons, he couldn’t tell me where the MP’s offices were, nor how to get there. What, I asked, if I was on a recce prior, for instance, to delivering a petition to my MP in person, as part of the democratic process?
Misplaced market: Surrey Street Market is just a short walk away, but Westfield have allowed this trader to set up a pitch inside the Whitgift Centre
All that elicited was a short Q&A about the nature of said hypothetical petition. This resulted in a “none of your business” exchange.
Ultimately, I was told I would need to make an appointment with either the MP or the party and then, on presenting myself in the centre on that occasion, I would be escorted to them.
Abandoning the futile conversation, I ventured back into the centre, tried a few desultory enquiries of the Mitie people down the Marks’ end (as the supervisor seemed to have decided to linger around the tower block), and only got the same claims to ignorance.
I then tried a few shopkeepers who remain trading in the empty shopping mall to see what they might know, only to come away empty-handed again. Julian, the manager of Waterstones book store, turned out to be a lovely, helpful chap. Yet unfortunately of no assistance to me in my quest.
I gave up – now believing that Sarah Jones’s office was, in fact, a political Brigadoon, only becoming visible every now and then to the appointed or anointed. I went to Bishops Wine Bar for a pint. They didn’t know where the office was either…
My failure to find my goal means that, of four correspondents from this website to try to reach the MP’s office, 50% of us could not. That was surely never the case while Sarah Jones had her old constituency office on a main road, handily near the Blackhorse Lane tram stop.
Given that the postcode for Jones’s new office is so opaque, perhaps Labour could adopt What3Words for directing people towards them.
How about cant.find.labour?
Read more: Ken Towl takes a magical mystery tour around the Whitgift Centre
Read more: Annabel Smith takes a peek behind sad old centre’s curtains
Read more: David Morgan delves into the Whitgift’s desolate maze
Read more: ‘Permanently closed’: Whitgift Centre works mark end of days
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
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
I worry that Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield are keen to empty the whole of the Whitgift Centre and your contributor’s difficulty in gaining access to Sarah Jones’ office is part of this concerted campaign.
Presumably URW can then claim that there is no longer a demand for retail or office units in the Whitgift Centre and they can demolish the lot and proceed with a residential development of the site.
So far as I am concerned, this is a declaration of war on both Croydon Council and Croydon as a whole. Whilst it will be very unpopular with URW, I wish Croydon Council would investigate whether it can use the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act 2023 and hold High Street Rental Auctions for units in the Whitgift Centre which have been empty for more than 365 days in 24 months.
Once that threshold is reached, councils can step in and auction a one-to-five-year lease. The threat of using these powers may result in URW engaging with Croydon Council in a more meaningful manner.
Presumably the number of empty units may result in them being available for negligible rents. In the circumstances, I would have no sympathy for URW if they were made available at peppercorn rents.
I hope that following this episode Sarah Jones lodges a formal complaint with URW and asks for a substantial rebate in any rents which she may currently be paying.
Indeed I hope that Sarah Jones liaises with Rowenna Davis and Ms Davis uses this issue as a platform for her campaign to be mayor next year. Empty properties become magnets for anti-social behaviour and vandalism, impact a location’s economic performance, and impact positive footfall, risking the viability of other businesses nearby.
Wins top comment of the week.
MP Jones, of course, pays not a penny rent for her constituency office. That’s done by parliamentary officials, using tax-payers’ money.
As a footnote: Jones moved into the Whitgift Centre about a year ago. She has asked Westfield for better -any! – signage to her office. That no such signs have been provided show that Westfield holds a government minister in as much contempt as they have shown to Croydon Council and its residents and businesses.