Whiteley Shopping Centre: How ghost town outlet village was demolished and rebuilt in two years

Whiteley was once a far cry from the big-brand shopping centre it is today. Here’s how it was transformed

Whiteley Shopping Centre now hosts recognisable big-name brands - M&S, Next, FatFace and Mamas and Papas all trade underneath its gleaming glass fronts, on the crossroads-style pedestrianised layout.

But turn the clock back, and it the area looked very different. Whiteley Village was conceived as an outlet centre; a place for shoppers to find bargains from chains. It cost £60m and opened in 1999, but the concept did not work here. By the late noughties it was a ghost town, with a ragbag of shops, few shoppers, and little to tempt the casual visitor.

This led the landowner the Whiteley Co-ownership to hatch a plan to revamp the area, and in 2007 it submitted a plan to Winchester City Council to demolish the centre and start again. Despite an appeal from Fareham Borough Council - worried about the effect a rejuvenated Whiteley might have on Fareham’s town centre - the plan was passed, and in June 2011 the centre closed for a major overhaul.

Rather than a facelift, wholesale demolition was used to start from scratch, and two years later - on May 23, 2013 - the centre reopened to crowds.