Lewisham’s £1.5bn shopping centre redevelopment freeze, caused by a breakdown between Landsec and the Council, has left residents, traders, and the town centre stranded in uncertainty, says Sergiy Lesyk
Lewisham shows how a council can lose a £1.5bn scheme and gain nothing.
Landsec, the property company that has owned Lewisham Shopping Centre for more than 20 years, has put its £1.5bn redevelopment of the centre on hold. Councillors approved the scheme in October 2025, and work had been due to start in 2027. Now nobody can say when, or whether, anything will happen.
You don’t have to have liked the plans to see the problem that residents and traders in Lewisham now face.
Landsec gave two reasons: one was the cost of building in London, the other was the Council. In Landsec’s words, recent statements from the Council “make clear that the administration is not able to support the next phase of land assembly needed to unlock delivery without a significant increase in affordable housing.”
On a social video, the mayor, Liam Shrivastava, had the temerity to state “the conditions for such developments are simply not favourable right now”, and that “the way out of the housing crisis is through building social housing.”
The mayor was elected on a promise of 1,000 new social rent homes. Instead, the plan to replace the shopping centre with 1,744 homes, including 98 for social rent and 231 at discounted rents or for key workers, will no longer be built. The shopping centre development took about five years to approve, so who really thinks this council will match it any time soon?
Boots has left its high street unit, which sits in the first phase, for a unit inside the centre. Marks & Spencer, a fixture in Lewisham for almost a century, has closed for good, Natwest has said it will close its branch, and the Model Market food hall still hasn’t reopened.
Landsec itself says the 1970s building is no longer fit for purpose, as it had been expected to be demolished.
Labour, which approved the scheme, and the Greens, who now run the Council, are busy blaming each other, and the mayor is blaming the government. Finger-pointing won’t build a single home or fill a single empty unit.
Lewisham is being let down
And the drift goes well beyond the shopping centre. A short walk away, the 649 homes of the Filigree at Lewisham Gateway have stood empty since a flood in February 2025, and residents won’t be back before October 2027. Nearby, one resident told us that food waste bins turned up at their block with no guidance and no collections. The building manager has had to tell everyone not to use them until the council explains what happens next. Even the council’s own website can’t seem to agree on whether flats are getting food waste collections.
This matters well beyond SE13. London needs homes, and it needs investors with the long-term support and confidence of local councils to build them.
So what should happen now?
First, the council should be straight with residents about what it told Landsec and what it now expects to happen to the site.
Second, it should publish a support plan for the traders caught up in the uncertainty, because they’re paying for decisions they didn’t make.
Third, and most importantly, it should set out its own plan for Lewisham town centre. If this scheme wasn’t good enough, the Council needs to show what would be, who will build it, and when.
Lewisham Conservatives support homes and investment in Lewisham, but not a town centre left in limbo. Residents were promised new homes, a new town centre and a new community. They’ve been let down. The council can’t build any of it until it first rebuilds their trust.
Sergiy Lesyk is chairman of Lewisham Conservatives