It is important that our shopping districts and high streets are places people want to visit, work and live. Many need regeneration. That’s why I wanted to write to let you know about the new plans on Brighton Road, Purley, just north of the town centre on the derelict former Milk & More site.
If approved, these new plans will deliver an M&S Foodhall offering local customers the best of M&S produce, lower priced items from its Remarksable range, and fresh items from an instore bakery. The plans would also deliver an Enterprise Hub at the rear consisting of affordable studio spaces to help local creative businesses innovate and grow, along with 70 car parking spaces – all on the currently vacant site.
After years of bad news in Croydon, it is good we have new leadership following the ejection of the failed Labour administration last year. Progress is at last being made in our Borough, with organisations like M&S now choosing to invest here.
More information about the plans and computer-generated mock ups of what the completed site would look like can be found on the project website www.brightonroad.co.uk. You can also find an online consultation on the website, and I would encourage you to have your say. Please do also let me know your thoughts if you would like to.
With the plans for a new Purley Pool and regeneration of that site just published; an end to Labour destroying family homes and replacing them with blocks of flats; Westfield buying the whole Whitgift site in Croydon town centre and promising to move it forwards (on a phased basis, over time) and now this news about the Milk & More site – it feels like a corner has at last been turned in our neighbourhood. It will take time, but at least we seem to be heading in a better direction now.
