Lewisham Council has scaled back plans to redevelop Catford town centre and scrapped a scheme to reroute the South Circular Road after government cash was withdrawn.
Proposals to knock down the Catford shopping centre and the adjacent Milford Towers for new tower blocks have been shelved, with the Green-run council moving to a “retrofit-first” approach instead.
Five years ago the council, run by Labour at the time, approved a £500 million plan to build thousands of new homes in the area and transform the town centre by diverting the A205 behind Laurence House, the council’s HQ, which was itself originally set for demolition.
A new “civic square” would have been created where the road is now.
Work on moving the South Circular should have started this year, but the project was dependent on funding from the Westminster government which was withdrawn last year, Lewisham’s mayor and cabinet heard on Wednesday evening when a new business plan for the area’s redevelopment was approved.
Now the council and Transport for London will embark on changes to the existing road to make it less of a barrier, including a new crossing outside the Catford Bridge Tavern, improving crossings outside the Broadway Theatre and on Brownhill Road and looking at new western access to Catford Bridge station. Work is due to start next year.
There have been plans to move the A205 for many years, with TfL even owning two strips of land that would make this possible. But the council’s car park on Canadian Avenue, which is where the South Circular would have been diverted, could be developed instead.
Catford shopping centre will now stay in place for the “foreseeable future” and is now offering leases of up to 15 years. The centre and other land in the town centre is owned by a council company which is now running at a deficit because the regeneration scheme has gone on for so long, Daniel Dream, the regeneration cabinet member, said.
“Its future role and purpose will be reviewed and reset as a result of us approving this paper,” he said. Some £1.3 million in debt will be written off, while the council will lend the company £500,000.
The council document also suggests retrofitting the shopping centre’s car park along the lines of Peckham Levels, which has been transformed into workspace and venues for events. The space would “become a benefit to the town centre, not a negative”, costing up to £10 million, the report says.
Work to refurbish and retrofit the much-criticised Milford Towers estate could start from 2029, it adds, with the regeneration of the Park Hill Estate in Sheffield given as an example.
“When it comes to the retrofit aspect, this isn’t a smaller ambition than demolition and rebuild,” Dream said. “It’s a more honest one, and increasingly, it’s the only credible one. In a climate emergency, the greenest building is very often the one already standing, and that’s not sentiment. That’s carbon arithmetic.
“It also means caring for the history and value that’s already here: the theatre, the Catford Centre, the overlooked history of the Brookdale Club, the people already living in Milford Towers, rather than simply clearing them out of the way in the name of progress that can only be measured in square footage and unit counts.
“There are sites for new development that are still identified in the plan, and new homes are still coming forward. But there’s a difference between completely replacing somewhere and thickening it.
“And growth doesn’t have to mean starting from a demolished site. We need to add to what’s already here and strengthen it, rather than keep reaching for a version of progress that starts by knocking down things that could be put to better use.”
Some elements of the Catford plan are progressing as planned: the Catford House pub opened in the old Catford Constitutional Club building last year while work on 113 homes at Thomas Lane is due to start “in the coming months”.
In addition, the Castle Catford cinema is also due to open this autumn, replacing the old Catford Mews, which closed amid rancour nearly two years ago. Goldsmiths University is also due to open a campus at the Old Town Hall in September next year.
Plans to restore the Catford Cat sculpture, which has been in place for more than 50 years, also remain in the plan. Dream said the fibreglass feline had been “watching over us for years patiently, the way that cats do. And it might not be the most important part of the business plan, but it does actually matter to a lot of people, and whatever the state of the shopping centre underneath it, there’s no place like Catford.”
A couple of miles north, plans by a private developer to demolish Lewisham shopping centre are continuing. But the plans depend on Lewisham Council’s help to compulsorily-purchase the former Citibank HQ on Molesworth Street. Of 1,744 homes planned, only 20 per cent are legally defined as “affordable”: 98 for social rent and 231 at a discounted market rent.
Liam Shrivastava, the borough’s elected mayor, said at a council meeting in July that he would “only consider the use of a compulsory purchase order if my concerns about the lack of family homes and homes for social rent are addressed”.
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