Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield has run an autumn consultation on regenerating Croydon town centre that refers to a possible data centre only once, even though council planning papers list it as one of several potential uses for the Whitgift Centre site.
The consultation, branded The Croydon Project, ran for the past month and the developer’s brochure, which is about 25 pages long, contains a single reference to “data centre space” in a small panel headlined “Futureproofing the town centre”, according to the consultation material.
By contrast, a report to Croydon Council’s planning committee on 24 September 2026 describes outline proposals from the developer as a residential led mixed use scheme with “in the region of 3,000 to 4,000 new homes”, mixed commercial space, and “potential for wider uses such as education, hotel and micro logistics hub and/or data centre”. That language is one of three mentions of a possible data centre in the council papers, the documents show.
URW acquired the Whitgift Centre freehold from the Whitgift Foundation in July 2026 in a £31.5 million transaction, the company said. The latest consultation is the seventh that Westfield has held on the site and is the second staged this year. None of the previous six consultations has produced construction, and planning permissions granted in 2014 and 2018 covered about 1,000 flats.
Scale of the proposals
The current proposals, as described in the consultation material and council papers, envisage significantly more housing than the earlier permissions. Buildings of 30 to 45 storeys are described along Wellesley Road, and the number of homes identified in the council documents is roughly four times the earlier housing figure.
The consultation document says feedback will be taken into account as the developer finalises plans before submitting an outline planning application to set the framework for future development. No outline planning application for the scheme has been submitted, and the mention of a data centre in council papers is described there as a possible use rather than an approved element.
Industry sources suggested to reporters that the current exercise could also be a valuation move ahead of a possible sale of Westfield’s interest, a claim not advanced on the record by any named official. Those same industry sources also said URW used artificial intelligence to generate much of the imagery in this round of consultation material; the developer has not disputed that point.
Croydon Council has not commented on the consultation. The planning committee report cited is an outline report setting out considerations for members, and it described a range of commercial and community uses that might sit alongside new housing.
Any proposal to include a data centre on the Whitgift site would raise questions about infrastructure, energy demand and planning use class, matters that the council would examine if and when a specific planning application is lodged. At present the council papers refer to a data centre only as one of several potential uses, and the developer’s public material gives it little prominence.
The Whitgift Centre and the surrounding town centre have repeatedly been the subject of redevelopment proposals over the past decade. The latest round, labelled The Croydon Project, forms part of a process that could culminate in an outline application establishing a development framework, though the timetable and the detailed content of any submission remain under the control of the developer.
For now, residents and interested parties can respond to the consultation while the developer considers feedback, and the planning authority will assess any future application against local and national planning policies. The precise mix of homes, commercial floorspace and wider uses including any data centre will depend on those future stages, the council documents make clear.
