Planning and tax changes could match delayed Westfield scheme – Inside Croydon

Go for growth: Croydon, the Whitgift Center and Westfield could see a long-delayed redevelopment boost under the new Labor government’s approach.

Does the growth agenda of Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves’ Labor government deliver any change of fortune for Croydon? ANDREW FISHER, pictured right, weighs the possibilities

It should have been so different: “Croydon’s future has been secured with an agreement to redevelop the town centre,” declared a press release from the office of London Mayor Boris Johnson in 2013.

The then Tory-led Croydon Council, including cabinet member Jason Perry and then Tory MP for Croydon Central Gavin Barwell, all claimed their share of the credit, but the shopping center originally scheduled to open in 2017 never materialized . while Westfield developers have long appeared to be looking to get out of their commitments.

Some of us were skeptical from the start. The rise of online retail had already been affecting business for over a decade or more by the time the redevelopment of Croydon’s Whitgift and Central shopping centers was proposed in 2013. Some ill-conceived plans have also made the proposition dubious even then.

After nearly 12 years, Croydon town center has certainly been transformed, but no one would argue for the better.

After two rounds of planning applications, public inquiries and CPOs, the proposed £1.4 billion Hammerson and Westfield scheme is dead and buried. But last year Westfield said it would unveil a new “masterplan” for Croydon, although not until 2025, and it could take until 2038 to deliver. What is a 21 year delay between friends?

But could the change in government, with its urgent focus on growth, make a difference to breathing new life into Croydon town center – speeding up or even improving these plans?

Here are five ways it could.

Reform of business rates

Store plan: Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, wants to adjust business tax

Ahead of the general election, Labour’s manifesto promised they would “replace the business rates system so we can raise the same revenue but in a fairer way. This new system will level the playing field between the high street and online giants”.

So more Amazon warehouses will pay more tax and the main stores will pay less.

Lowering the cost of doing business on the high street could save some and also encourage others to invest in places like Croydon – god knows there’s plenty of scope for that with all the empty retail units from city center…

Labor is likely to want to move quickly on this, with an announcement in the Autumn Budget, if not before. This could help attract more retail back to the town center but also change the balance of Westfield’s updated proposals.

Planning Regulations

The No.1 mission of the new Labor government is to achieve the highest sustained growth among the major Western economies. Last year, Britain ranked sixth in the G7 and, after a decade and a half of anemic growth, Labor is keen to kick-start the economic expansion.

His main remedy for this is planning reform – be it energy infrastructure (the Cameron-era ban on onshore wind is already gone) or housing, but probably also major projects like city center regeneration.

Westfield’s latest set of plans for Croydon included almost 1,000 new homes and they have been busy moving into the increasingly residential sector with their other London shopping centers at Stratford and Shepherds Bush.

Housing objectives

Everything changes: a decade ago, most of it was to be converted to retail. Residential development is likely to feature in any new plans

Labor said it would restore housing targets which forced councils to set local targets and identify sites for extra homes. To help with this, Labor has promised to fund 300 extra planning officers in English councils.

The Conservative government, elected in 2019, promised to build 300,000 homes a year. Never came close in any year. Labor made the same pledge this year. Let’s see if I can deliver.

The key thing will be the provision of truly affordable homes and council homes. England has more families living in temporary accommodation than before, but Labor has not announced any council house building targets.

new colleagues

Labor promised to “transform further education colleges into specialist colleges of technical excellence” to “work with business, unions and local government to provide young people with better employment opportunities and the highly skilled workforce that economies need local”.

It also promised to present a “post-16 skills strategy”.

This could be good news for Croydon College and London South Bank University’s city center campus. Should the extra money be delivered for further and higher education, the number of empty units on Wellesley Road and in the town center makes it viable to expand institutions in Croydon – bringing more people into the town centre.

Jobs in the public service

The Home Office: Ruskin Square 2 will house 5,000 civil servants once ready for use later this year

The last Labor government moved civil service jobs from central London to Croydon and it is quite conceivable that more could follow. The Ruskin Square development next to East Croydon Station is already home to a large HMRC office, and in about a month the Home Office is due to move 5,000 staff from four older office blocks in Croydon town center to a new building nearby.

Croydon’s multiple empty office blocks now offer an opportunity for more relocation – and almost certainly at a lower cost than central London accommodation.

More jobs brought to Croydon means more traffic into the town center – whether in the public or private sector – and will only make town center regeneration more attractive.

Council funding

This is the trickiest of all areas – and probably the area where the new government is weakest.

Mayor not very executive: Jason Perry has increased Council Tax but not fixed the finances

Councils have collapsed across the country, many more are on the brink and years of austerity will have to be rolled out.

In his letter to the new Secretary of State for Local Government, Jason Perry, our not-so-executive mayor (although he’s still paid to be one) admitted that Croydon’s finances won’t be fixed without government intervention. Something we all knew when his Tory colleagues in the department ignored his previous pleas and approved his and Jason Cummings’ decision to increase Council Tax by 15% (which did nothing to fix funding).

We all need a functioning board that can lead and co-ordinate, not an empty shell directed by Whitehall to sell assets.

Funding is urgent – ​​and for Croydon’s sake, the new government must succeed where its predecessor failed.

Andrew Fisher’s recent columns:

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