Tapi Carpets to replace Halfords in Old Kent Road
The former Halfords store in the Old Kent Road is to become a branch of the Tapi Carpets & Floors chain.
![Tapi Carpets to replace Halfords in Old Kent Road](/content/images/size/w1200/2023/12/PXL_20231220_190721099.jpg)
The Halfords store closed in August this year, with customers directed to the chain's Brixton store instead.
![](https://www.se1.news/content/images/2023/12/F28nH1-WEAAXoRY.jpeg)
The Tapi chain was set up in 2015 by Martin Harris, son of Carpetright founder Lord Harris of Peckham.
The new Tapi shop will compete with Carpetright - sold by the Harris family a decade ago - which has an Old Kent Road store on the Southernwood Retail Park near Tesco.
The currently empty ex-Halfords store is part of the Cantium Retail Park which changed hands a year ago for £38 million.
The previous owner of the retail park - which also includes the B&Q and Pets at Home stores - won approval from Southwark Council in 2019 for a development of 1,100 homes in towers up to 48 storeys high.
This month a deputy mayor of London warned that the redevelopment of the Old Kent Road is "stalling" without confirmed funding for the Bakerloo line extension.
Cantium Retail Park's current owners - LondonMetric - are in the process of carrying out some small-scale works in the car park which will 'implement' the 2019 planning permission for the skyscraper development to prevent it from expiring.