Campaigners hoping to halt the redevelopment of Lewisham Shopping Centre want the borough’s new Green council to stop a potential compulsory purchase of the old Citibank tower.
Save Lewisham Shopping Centre wants more affordable housing added to the £1.5 billion redevelopment. Councillors approved the scheme in October, and that decision was rubber-stamped by the council’s officers last week.
To enable the developer Landsec’s plans to go ahead in full, Lewisham Council will need to issue the order (CPO) for Lewisham House, the tower block behind the centre on Molesworth Street. While Landsec owns the freehold to the land, the tower is leased by a separate developer which is unwilling to sell voluntarily and has its own plans for the site.
Campaigners see the CPO as key to whether the development goes ahead in its current form, or is halted to provide more affordable homes.
Work is expected to begin next year and will take ten years. Landsec wants to build a new mall and 1,744 homes – of which only 20 per cent are legally defined as “affordable”: 98 for social rent and 231 at a discounted market rent. There will also be up to 630 student rooms and 445 co-living homes, a music venue, new public spaces and a rooftop meadow.
When Lewisham councillors approved the scheme, the borough was under Labour control, but the Greens won the council election in May. Liam Shrivastava, who has taken over as elected mayor, criticised the development in the run-up to the election.
Campaigners say there are more than 11,000 people on Lewisham’s housing waiting list and a need for more family-sized homes.
Christine Hannigan, from Save Lewisham Shopping Centre, said: “The council’s own data reports that families on the housing waiting list need affordable three and four-bedroom homes and a lot of the people on the housing waiting list are families.
“The fact that most of the affordable housing is going to be one and two bedrooms, it’s not going to reduce overcrowding and that’s not serving the families who have kids growing up in poverty because of housing costs.”
Another campaigner, Aleya Marzuki, said: “A lot of the emphasis on the campaign right now is raising awareness about the CPO and showing that legally, this is something the council can do and blocking it is well within their power.
“We did a big petition to save the shopping centre and that garnered over 4,000 signatures. We are currently trying to push for that to be sort of a starting point, and push for a debate in council around the CPO.”
The group will hold a demonstration outside Lewisham Town Hall in Catford before the new council’s first full meeting on July 22. The meeting had been due to be this Wednesday, but was postponed to allow staff and councillors to watch the England v Argentina World Cup semi-final, the council told The Greenwich Wire.
Shrivastava said he would use his influence “to make the most of every opportunity to increase the amount of social housing provided”.
He said: “I have consistently said that I don’t think the level of family homes and homes for social rent is adequate to meet the needs of our residents.
“This administration is taking an ambitious approach, exploring innovative strategies to ensure that development opportunities contribute more broadly to increasing housing delivery across the borough.”
In January, the Labour council approved the CPO plans in principle. It said using the powers would be a last resort,, but said delaying the process could lead to valuable time being lost in progressing the project.
The old bank building has towered over Lewisham since the late 1970s. Citibank moved to Canary Wharf in 2001, but retains a data centre close by, and in 2015 the lease was sold to Lewisham House No 1 Ltd (LHN1), a Guernsey-based company, which wants to develop the tower itself and has objected to Landsec’s plans.
In addition to the 1,744 new homes, the scheme includes a new shopping centre, LHN1 had objected to Landsec’s proposals at the time of the planning meeting in October. It already has approval to turn Lewisham House into private flats and has also applied to build 319 co-living homes there. LHN1 has previously said this is a “sustainable, low-risk approach” which would reduce disruption to the town centre.
Meanwhile, Landsec wants to use Lewisham House for 450 one-bed, two-bed and three-bed homes – of which 90 would be ring-fenced for key workers. It would partly demolish and extend the building from 15 to 33 storeys.
This phase includes improvements to Rennell Street and new shops, but Landsec says none of this will come forward if Lewisham House is converted into private flats or co-living homes by LHN1.
Shrivastava said: “The previous administration approved a CPO in principle, however there is no CPO on my desk at the moment. Any use of CPO powers must be justified by a clear and compelling public benefit.”
He said it was “a scandal” that the old Citibank building had stood empty for so long.
“Lewisham House is owned by an offshore company,, who have had numerous applications approved but have never followed through with them,” he said. “Their current planning application proposes no affordable housing whatsoever.”
Lewisham Shopping Centre opened as the Riverdale Centre in 1977, with a generation of SE Londoners growing up with its bright colours, playground, hippo-shaped rubbish bins and a collection of Swiss-style figures at the heart of the centre that revolved on the hour. These were swept away in a later revamp of the centre.
Some parts of the centre, including the Riverdale Hall, have not been used for many years.
A spokesperson for Landsec said: “The approved masterplan would deliver 1,700 new homes, 20 per cent of which will be affordable, along with a number of public benefits which the redevelopment of Lewisham House alone could not deliver.
“Our proposals for Lewisham House sit within phase 1b of our scheme which would create 1, 2 and 3 bed homes including 90 homes ring-fenced for key workers.”
They added: “The masterplan was designed in collaboration with over 3,000 people who live and work in Lewisham and, in addition to new homes, provides a new public park, a permanent home for Lewisham’s much-loved Model Market, and a 500-capacity culture, music and arts venue, plus a reimagined shopping centre, offering the same amount of retail space as today.”
LHN1, the leaseholder of Lewisham House, said in a statement: “Our plans for Lewisham House represent everything that the Green Party campaigned for at this year’s elections. We will deliver 319 homes through a best-practice sustainable retrofit of Lewisham House whilst retaining the civic heart of Lewisham, the shopping centre. Recognising the need to deliver sustainable regeneration that works for everyone, we will also deliver a £6.2 million contribution to go directly toward the Green Party’s 1,000 social home target, an ongoing donation of ground-floor workspace for local organisations, a jobs and skills programme and free access to the building’s communal spaces for local groups.
“Instead, the Green Party are enabling Labour’s masterplan, which is not deliverable, not viable, not sustainable, provides no guarantee of affordable housing delivery and relies on a long, expensive and uncertain CPO process. It is everything that the Green Party campaigned against when they sought a better deal for the community at the elections – but clearly, they have not considered the alternatives to the shopping centre masterplan.
“Whilst Landsec have publicly stated they are delaying delivery of housing projects including the masterplan, we are fully committed to delivering our plans and are seeking a positive decision on our planning application as quickly as possible. Our desire remains to engage with the Green Party on our proposals, and we hope that they come to the table to discuss in good faith.”
Ruby Gregory is the Local Democracy Reporter for Lewisham. The Greenwich Wire is a partner in the Local Democracy Reporting Service, which is a BBC-funded initiative to ensure councils are covered properly in local media. Additional reporting by Darryl Chamberlain and Dorothy Stein. Amended at 1pm on Wednesday to add LHN1 statement.
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