Croydon is fighting the draft London Plan's 5,600 Green Belt homes and Westfield now owns the Whitgift freehold for £31.5m. Where each big scheme stands.

Croydon’s planning summer has produced two stories that will shape the borough for decades: the Mayor of London’s draft new London Plan proposes putting 5,600 homes on Croydon’s Green Belt, and the council has formally declared it will fight the idea; meanwhile the Whitgift Centre’s ownership tangle, which has stalled the town centre’s redevelopment for a decade, was finally simplified when Westfield’s owner bought the freehold for £31.5 million. Here is where each of the borough’s big planning stories stands, all from the council’s own documents and announcements.

The Green Belt fight: Croydon vs the draft London Plan

On 21 July 2026 the council announced it will oppose the draft London Plan in its current form. The Mayor of London’s draft sets Croydon a target of 21,544 new homes over ten years: 15,944 on brownfield sites, plus 5,600 on Green Belt land in a proposed growth area between Croydon and New Addington. Executive Mayor Jason Perry’s line was blunt: “We need more homes, including affordable homes, but our Green Belt is sacrosanct.” The council argues the nearly 16,000 brownfield homes should come first, along with the 300,000-plus homes already approved but unbuilt across London (Croydon Council).

Bar chart comparing Croydon's ten-year housing targets: the current London Plan target of 20,790 homes, and the draft new London Plan figure of 21,544 homes, made up of 15,944 on brownfield sites plus 5,600 on Green Belt land in a Croydon to New Addington growth area
Chart by Croydon Today, from the GLA's current London Plan target and the council's 21 July 2026 announcement.

For scale: the current London Plan already gives Croydon one of the biggest targets in the capital, 20,790 homes between 2019 and 2028, about 2,079 a year (Mayor of London). The draft plan’s ask is slightly larger in total, but the change that matters is where: for the first time it points development at the borough’s protected land.

What it means for you: this is a consultation, not a decision. It runs until 15 October 2026, and anyone can respond to the Greater London Authority. If the growth area survives into the adopted plan, the fields between Croydon and New Addington become the borough’s biggest planning battleground for the 2030s.

The Local Plan: examined, but not yet adopted

The borough’s own rulebook is mid-process. The council submitted its Local Plan review in November 2024, and three independent inspectors held examination hearings across September and October 2025, ending on 23 October. The next step is a set of main modifications, the inspectors’ required changes, which must go out for a six-week public consultation before the plan can be adopted; the Planning Inspectorate has told the council the plan is “ready to progress to the next stage” (Croydon Council: Local Plan examination).

The council’s published timetable anticipated adoption in spring 2026, a date that has now slipped (local plan programme). Until adoption, the 2018 Local Plan remains the development plan for deciding applications.

What it means for you: the main-modifications consultation will be the last chance to comment on the plan’s changes, and it is the stage where site allocations get their final form. We will update this page when the consultation opens.

Whitgift: the £31.5m deal that unblocks the town centre

The single biggest obstacle to rebuilding central Croydon has always been its split ownership. On 15 July 2026 that changed: the John Whitgift Foundation sold the freehold of the Whitgift Centre, Green Park House and parts of the Allders building to Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield for £31.5 million. URW already held the long lease; it now controls the site outright, which the council says “positively facilitates” the regeneration. URW’s masterplan framework for the North End Quarter proposes shops, culture, public spaces and new homes (Croydon Council).

Tempering the optimism: the formal planning application, originally due by February 2026 under the masterplan agreement, had already slipped to mid-2026 by last autumn, and businesses in the centre have been told no development work will start before 2028 (Inside Croydon). After fifteen years of false starts, the freehold deal is real progress; the diggers are still some way off.

Purley Pool: approved, cleared, and still waiting

South of the centre, the long-promised replacement for Purley’s shut leisure centre has full permission but no builders. The planning committee approved the scheme in February 2025: a new leisure centre with a 25-metre six-lane pool, training pool and 80-station gym, alongside 180 later-living homes, a care home and a new public square (Croydon Council). The Greater London Authority confirmed in December 2025 it would not intervene, clearing the last planning hurdle, yet no demolition or construction had started as of May 2026 (London Now).

How to follow it, and have your say

Day-to-day applications carry on regardless of the big plans. The council’s register runs on Idox Public Access at publicaccess3.croydon.gov.uk, and our guide to Croydon planning applications covers how to search it, comment within the deadline, and frame an objection the council can legally weigh. For the strategic fights, the two pages to watch are the GLA’s new London Plan consultation (open until 15 October 2026) and the council’s Local Plan examination page for the main-modifications consultation.

Sources

Checked against the council’s planning pages and announcements on 7 August 2026. Timetables slip, so confirm dates on the linked pages before relying on them. Our other guides cover Croydon planning applications, Croydon house prices and Croydon council tax bands.