Inside Croydon: "[Hammerson] confirms another five years of blight." (And there's also Brexit.)

Link to web site

"The 'rush' to redevelop the somewhat sad and down-at-heel Whitgift Centre has slowed to a crawl, with the promised shiny new £1.4billion megamall now unlikely to be ready to open until 2022 – a full decade since the scheme was first announced, and five years later than the original 2017 completion date.

"Who says so? Hammerson and Westfield, or 'Hammersfield', in their joint guise as The Croydon Partnership, the developers who have been chuntering on about the town centre’s bright new future since 2012, but who have yet to cement a single brick.

"... Both Labour and Tories fought the last local elections in 2014 on the expectation that the Hammersfield redevelopment would begin and be completed during the four-year term of the current council, with all the many wonders of its new shops and other benefits coming on-stream to placate the voters just before the 2018 Town Hall elections."