After 15 years, two large-scale planning applications, a planning inquiry and a CPO, Croydon’s biggest landowners have today announced that they have sold off a large chunk of their property in the benighted town centre in the hope that it might accelerate the promised £1billion regeneration.
By STEVEN DOWNES
Changing hands: Westfield – now Paris-based URW – is buying the Whitgift Centre for £31.5m
Shopping mall developers Westfield – now trading as Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, and based in Paris – have bought the Whitgift Centre, those parts of the Allders site that they don’t already own, plus other property near West Croydon Station from Croydon’s biggest landowners, the Whitgift Foundation, in a deal valued at £31.5million.
Sources within the Foundation deny that the sale comes after they, as landlords, have been squeezed by their development “partners” over many years, watching their income from their properties gradually decline.
Westfield were the only potential buyers, and they moved to secure the deal to help them deliver the outline proposals contained within a “masterplan” that has the approval of Croydon Council, the local planning authority, for up to 3,000 homes in a mixed-use scheme across the Whitgift and Centrale shopping centres and the surrounding retail area.
In 2023, Westfield snaffled up Hammerson’s 50% stake in the “Croydon Partnership” for a fraction of what their developer rivals had paid for Centrale. Today’s deal completes the property acquisition of Croydon town centre, while providing a stark illustration of the fall in value of commercial and retail property. Fifteen years ago, the Centrale centre was sold for £98million.
URW had a long lease on the Whitgift Centre, where they have become controversial landlords, exercising break clauses on tenant businesses’ leases as unit by unit is vacated. Last year, URW opened six “kiosks” along North End, on the ground floor of the Allders building. Meanwhile, five times as many businesses – including the likes of high street favourites Accessorize, Monsoon and Super Dry – have joined a depressing exodus from the near-empty Whitgift Centre.
URW was supposed to deliver its latest planning application, the third in 15 years, by the end of 2024. That application has yet to be submitted, although the developers did conduct another public consultation earlier this year. It was reckoned to be the sixth consultation over the redevelopment of the town centre since 2011.
Empty mall: the almost deserted Whitgift Centre has gained fame as the location for a Taylor Swift music video
In a statement issued this morning about the sale of the Whitgift Centre, the Whitgift Foundation said: “Sixty years ago, the land was home to Trinity School, which then moved to Shirley Park.
“For many decades, income from the shopping centre site has helped fund bursaries for children to attend the Foundation’s schools who otherwise could not afford to do so. The income also supported the provision of almshouses in the town centre. This will continue following the sale, as the Foundation consolidates its endowment investments.”
In 2022, the Whitgift Foundation’s property income dropped to £1.2million. The following year, the then governors of the registered charity announced that they were to close the 900-pupil Old Palace girls’ independent school.
So the sale of the declining Whitgift Centre shopping mall will be seen in some quarters as an almost inevitable “correction”, after years of rental decline and the stalled property development.
By taking ownership of almost the entire redevelopment site, URW hopes to attract more public grants from housing agencies such as Homes England and the Greater London Authority, as well as being able to borrow more against their holdings.
URW’s Adam Smith told Inside Croydon that the purchase “further simplifies the ownership of the Whitgift Centre and Allders site”.
‘Beating heart of south London’: URW’s Adam Smith
Smith said: “The next steps are to lodge a strategic planning application for the site and to work collaboratively with Croydon Council and other local stakeholders on improvements to North End and the immediate area.
“This site holds strong potential to unlock Croydon as the beating heart of south London.”
And that has been the schtick since 2011, when in the wake of the Croydon riots, Boris Johnson, when Mayor of London, and Gavin Barwell, then the local MP, backed by the Tory-run local council, brokered the shotgun-marriage of Croydon’s two shopping malls, promising a £1billion development that was still closely aligned to high street retail, despite more than a decade’s evidence of the march on online shopping. Where are those two now..?
Recent, post-covid, years have seen the Foundation’s annual rents from their commercial properties fall by more than half, from a peak of £5.9million in 2017 to £2.1million for 2025, the most recent year that figures are publicly available.
The sale, the Foundation said today, will “enable it to focus on its core charitable aims of education and care, and to support the ongoing redevelopment of the town centre”.
The properties being sold comprise the Whitgift Centre, Green Park House at West Croydon, as well as those parts of Allders not already owned by URW.
URW will make the purchase payment over the next five years.
The Whitgift Foundation operates the historic town centre almshouses, next to Allders, as well as two care homes and two large independent schools, Trinity and Whitgift.
Roisha Hughes has been chief executive of the Whitgift Foundation since early 2025, and she did much of the heavy lifting to secure the sale to Westfield.
Deal-maker: Roisha Hughes, CEO of the Whitgift Foundation
She told Inside Croydon: “As an education and care charity, it’s right that we focus on our schools, almshouses and care provision.
“Following URW’s offer to buy the land, which they already lease from us, we have carefully considered what is best for the charity and the town. Simplifying the land ownership in the town centre will positively facilitate the town centre’s regeneration.
“We are confident that the sale will put the Foundation in a very solid position to deliver its core purpose in the decades ahead. Proceeds from the sale will be invested, and the income that is generated will continue to fund our charitable objectives, principally our bursary programme.”
Because of the Foundation’s charity status, the sale had to undergo some external checks and approvals. Work on the sale agreement began last October, and has the approval of the Whitgift Foundation’s Court of Governors, some of whom are appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
“We have tested every aspect of the proposal – strategic, financial and community impact – to ensure it is firmly aligned with the Foundation’s long-term charitable purpose,” said Fiona Fletcher-Smith, the chair of the Court of Governors.
“This is a significant moment for the Foundation. It enables us to strengthen our financial resilience.
“At the same time, we recognise the importance of this site to Croydon’s future. By simplifying ownership and enabling progress on regeneration, we believe this decision supports the long-term vitality of the town as well as the sustainability of the Foundation’s work.
“We are confident that this is the right and responsible course of action, for the Foundation, for those we serve and for the wider community.”
Croydon’s failed Mayor, Jason Perry, was not approached for comment because, quite frankly, he has nothing to do with the property sale, however much he’s likely to try to claim the credit.
Read more: Charity lost £2m last year over closure of Old Palace School
Read more: Crumbling finances see troubled Foundation lose millions more
Read more: Planning application for Westfield scheme stalled to mid-2026
Read more: Westfield boss says Croydon scheme could take 15 more years
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Final nail in the coffin of Croydon town centre………?!
” URW hopes to attract more public grants from housing agencies such as Homes England and the Greater London Authority” – in other words, us taxpayers are going to be milked to help a global corporation with a turnover of €3.55 billion and €1.27 billion net profits
No housing grants = no Westfield Croydon build. Croydon will probably be held to ransom again….and what a shambles this is. Let us hope they sell it on to a developer who actually want to build a shopping centre destination and not a bunch of grey flats with zero personality like Coppermaker Square
This is Croydon. We don’t want award-winning architecture that will attract international acclaim and culture vultures. We want bland, drab spreadsheet crap, fit for a clone town. And even if we don’t, that’s what we’ll get – check out the dullards and materialistic philistines running the Planning committee.
The exceedingly light £31.5m sales tag makes Tony Newman’s crazy £5m overpayment for the Crydon Park Hotel look insignificant.
Did the Whitgift Trustees get a suitably qualified designated adviser, acting exclusively for the charity, to produce a report that complied with the Charities (Dispositions of Land: Designated Advisers and Reports) Regulations 2023?
Now URW own the site, they can sell it. If they get planning permission, it will be worth more. The Whitgift Foundation can sigh with relief, but the cursed Croydon town centre may deteriorate much further yet. Why don’t I trust URW? Because they have done nothing, for too long, and have lied to us throughout.
‘Beating heart of south London’. More like Cesspitt of South London as they cannot attract even one elite brand to the centre anymore. As long as they do the layout and types of shops correctly…..retail is far from dead but URW seem to have given up and gone for the easy route out. What is the Whitgift Centre now will probably end up looking like Queens Gardens
Sad Times
Poor old Whitgift Foundation. How it has fallen. Now having to flog off the family jewels to keep it’s creditors at bay. This sounds like a bargain basement price the developers have extracted and the Board must all be thanking Gavin Barwell for getting into bed for them. Now they have got this bargain for doing nothing, why not hang around another decade to rip someone else off. Reckon there will be no guarantee clause to actually start doing any development as the blight will go on and on …
First the Old Palace went, then that nice big shopping centre on the old school site. Finally the Flamingos… to paraphrase Harold MacMillan
This is the saddest news I have heard about Croydon’s town centre since the riots.
Some 15 years ago I remember writing a letter which was published by a local newspaper about how even then there was insufficient money in retail to justify the sums contemplated for investment in the Whitgift Centre unless the primary objective was to build and sell flats in tower blocks. The Clerk to the Foundation invited me to discuss the situation with him and explained that major brands like Apple and Disney would only set up shop in the Centre if it were remodelled with larger open areas in the units.
I remained rather unconvinced.
Now the Whitgift Foundation has sold the freehold for, it has to be said, a pittance, in order to rid itself of an unproductive and troublesome asset. £31.5 million is a tiny fraction of the billion originally committed to the redevelopment and it is hard to imagine that Allder’s alone is not worth more.
As a charity, the Foundation has for centuries been a benign influence in the town, using its income and resources to help fund scholarships in its schools and accommodation for the elderly. It pains me to see it losing the heart of the town to a developer which has shown little sign of caring for our people or our interests.
I have always been of the opinion that the Foundation should not have been seduced by the pipe dreams of Westfield and Hammerson but should have continued to run what remains an appealing mall for the good of the town.
We are not of course privy to the joint venture agreement which the Whitgift Foundation (WF) signed before the current WF management was appointed. I fear that the Foundation had not contemplated URW deliberately running down the Whitgift Centre so that it became a ghost shopping centre. WF seems to have ceded responsibility and control for the day to day management of the Centre to URW. I presume that this has impacted the Foundation’s income significantly and URW’s separate Centrale development has benefited from the Whitgift Centre’s decline. With an article in the Daily Telegraph reporting on the record number of London new-builds sitting empty, I think it will be years before anyone seriously contemplates building flats on the Whitgift Centre – URW’s current plan. (There were 4,629 recently completed homes in the city which had failed to find a buyer in the three months to the end of June with a further 2,704 homes halted part-built.) At least WF can now invest the proceeds of sale and invest it more wisely. I hope that URW will now accept that their proposed flats scheme is unviable and will look to find tenants for the many empty units in the Whitgift Centre at rents which tenants can afford reflecting the high service charges and the business rates.
“Almost half of one-bedroom and studio flats in London are selling at a loss, new analysis of Land Registry data suggests.” And sure as hell no one is buying a £500k one bedroom flat next to any of Asif Aziz’s developments.
Also when Roisha Hughes mentioned last time, that talks between URW were “progressing” looks like the great citizens of Croydon have yet again been hoodwinked. Looks like Croydin are gonna get another 6 pointless kiosks in 4 years under Mayor Perry and some good looking cgi renders and….that’s about it. RIP Croydon.
URW should be investigated for all those CPOs they got on a false prospectus. If anything demonstrates why CPOs should not be used for private projects surely this project (is you can call something that never happens a project) is it? If I was the Whitgift Foundation I’d report them to Trading Standards for Bait & Switch…
Fingers crossed it helps revitalise Croydon town centre. Retail is a gonna, might as well go for leisure and housing. I hope some of the beautiful facades of the the old retail units are saved some how.
Flat prices are depreciating quickly, especially in London. No one wants to pay £1k a month on service charges alone. Lots of flats being advertised around East Croydon still. Will be very interested to see where URW go from here. Both building expensive flats or a supermall carry the same amount of risk in Croydon.
My guess is that they will stall the development for another few decades as they can’t decide where to go.