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£1.4bn Westfield

There’s a public consultation about the long-delayed Westfield redevelopment of the town centre. Yes, another one. But there’s no promises of when any work will actually begin, or end. 

After decades of broken promises and inflicting development blight on Croydon town centre, Westfield, in their latest guise, are running yet another public consultation over the scheme. This time, they say, it is “the next phase” of consultation “to help shape the future of Whitgift, Centrale and Allders”. If only.

Even the modest revival promised for Allders, where work on seven kiosks began in September last year, failed to materialise by summer 2025 as was promised by Mayor Jason Perry and his new besties at URW, the Paris-based Unibail Rodamco Westfield. The kiosks – their offering still a carefully guarded secret – opened by autumn.

Croydon business owners and the public are long past enjoying irony when it comes to Westfield and their broken promises. So the fact that the late-delivered kiosks are being paid for out of a £6million fine levied against Westfield for the late delivery of their promised £1.4billion shopping mall probably won’t prompt any laughs. After taking residents for mugs for almost 14 years, it is looking as if Mayor Perry has been the victim of a Croydon mugging by Westfield, after the parent company briefed its investors and shareholders this spring that they might have to flog off their leasehold interests in Croydon to fill a funding hole in their ambitious scheme in Hamburg. Headline news: Property Week‘s report, based on URW’s own briefing to investors and shareholders Trade magazine Property Week reported earlier this month that URW’s own investor report said that the Croydon site is “being considered for ‘co-development or future disposal’.” In February this year, URW and their architects were given carte blanche by the council’s planning department with their latest “Masterplan Framework”, as the Town Hall effectively passed the buck for their public planning responsibilities to the French development business. As they seek other property developers to buy in to the Croydon project, as well as millions of pounds in public funding from Homes England and the GLA, even URW are making no secret of their changed role in the scheme: one of their senior suits this month described URW’s role as that of “an urban masterplan developer”. INSIDE CROYDON