The Council wrote to residents in June to inform them that the current shopping centre structure and Milford Towers will need to be demolished to enable the complete redevelopment of the shopping centre.
The Council and Catford Regeneration Partnership Ltd (CRPL) are currently seeking to negotiate a deal with local landowners including Tesco to redevelop the town centre to include a new Tesco store, new shopping centre, improved road network, new homes and new public spaces, as well as having the potential to provide new leisure facilities and new office space. This deal forms the commercial basis for the regeneration programme. Work to gain vacant possession of the site can’t start until the deal is agreed and the funding and all the other approvals necessary for the scheme to proceed are in place.
The Council currently propose to commence demolition of Milford Towers in 2015.
what do council plan to do with the tenants of milford towers
The Council will have to find suitable alternative accommodation for the Milford Tower tenants. This process can take a long time.
Towers are bed bug infested and owners are trying to ignore it til they are bought out. The residents are paying the price of denial –
Surely they have a duty to keep the Towers in good order until they are demolished?
I’ve just moved in Milford Towers, I can’t believe they gona demolish it! I gotta move again then! Aaargh!
Any one know where a friend Nelson James moved to from milford towers
2015 and no sign of the demolition process! Is it ever going to happen?
I’ve been wondering the same thing.
So four and a half years after the original article what progress has been made? Some updates from the Council would help…………
Without trying to sound pessimistic I think we have to face the facts. The regeneration plan pretty much ended when TFL put the breaks on back in 2013 – the council plan was withdrawn awaiting further direction from TFL with regards positioning of the south circular. This was supposed to take 6 months but to my knowledge nothing has been communicated since either on the south circular or the wider plan to regenerate the shopping centre. Take this article outlining the planned demolition of Millford Towers back in 2011 – well nearly 5 years later one quick glance at rightmove reveals that people are still buying and selling flats there so there’s clearly no plan to take it down… what happened? Why has the council decided to abandon the regeneration? A few nice flats by the station cannot disguise the state of the centre – basically a ghost town of pound shops.
I was actually just going to write to the council to ask for an update on the regeneration and noticed the following on their website. Looks like they have been reviewing the TFL feedback on the positioning of the south circular against the impact to the existing plan. Maybe all is not lost after all but it’s moving at a painfully slow pace unfortunately – basically 18 months to assess the impact of the movement of a road.
Transport for London South Circular study
In August 2014 a Transport for London (TfL) study on re-routing of the A205 in Catford concluded that in broad terms a re-route which sent the road south of Laurence House and removed the southbound gyratory from Rushey Green onto Bromley Road appeared to have benefits in terms of journey times across the town centre and reduction in queueing traffic.
We have been asked by TfL to consider the impact the potential changes to the road network would have on regeneration plans for the town centre and to respond to them.
We appointed Allies and Morrison to help assess the impact of the move on redevelopment potential and to explore redevelopment potential within the town centre more generally to ensure that plans for Catford were suitably ambitious for an area with strong (and potentially improving) transport links.
We have been looking at the impact the road move would have on the development potential of the Laurence House site, which would become considerably smaller, and whether this is mitigated by the increased size of the town hall site. We have been looking at whether the development of our key sites is financially viable and in particular what does the road move cost us and how does Catford Town Centre benefit from it?
This intensive phase of assessment is now drawing to a close and plans are being prepared to report those findings to the Mayor and TfL and to set out next steps for bringing about redevelopment and agreeing a timetable for that process.
Once agreement has been reached on next steps, Council officers will be able to outline the proposed process to local residents and will consult on this as part of the Local Plan process.
So expect some movement in 2018 then?
I was really looking forward to the regeneration of Catford. I’m hoping something is done in my lifetime. (That’s the sound of bitter disappointing).
I agree; painfully slow is an understatement. I wish our MP would shake things up; someone needs to.
Yes agreed – a little more communication and energy from the local MP would be helpful.
They have the cash to regenerate the town but it just needs a driving force to move things on. It’s not like this won’t make a big difference to the local community. Can’t say I’ve ever actually seen a comment from the MP on any of this….