£1.4 billion scheme to revive Croydon’s rundown town centre with a huge new Westfield shopping mall has been scrapped after a decade of planning.
The proposal was the centrepiece of a massive revamp of Croydon’s Sixties Whitgift shopping centre to create a retail “destination” for the whole of south London and the commuter belt.
Work on the project — a joint venture between the French-owned mall operator and British property giant Hammerson brokered in 2012 by then mayor Boris Johnson — was supposed to have started three years ago.
In April it received another setback when John Lewis withdrew plans for a department store “anchor” for the centre.
Now the council has confirmed that planning permission for the development has expired and a new blueprint for reviving Croydon will have to be drawn from scratch.
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