Last year, the City of London Corporation announced that its plans to relocate the capital’s trio of wholesale food markets to a new, consolidated site beside the Thames at Dagenham Dock would not be going ahead after all and that, far from sticking with the status quo instead, Smithfield (meat) and Billingsgate (fish) would be closing anyway. It was decided that only New Spitalfields in Leyton (fruit and veg) would remain.
The decision was met with disappointment and dismay, not only, though diplomatically, by Barking & Dagenham Council, which had hailed the now-abandoned move as a big step forward for the borough’s economy, but also by objectors to the loss of historic institutions of London’s food supply network.
Some complained on heritage grounds. Some doubted the City’s reassurances that its financial compensation offer to the market traders would result in their setting up their own premises elsewhere. And some, including in City Corporation circles, believe the abandonment of the Dagenham Dock consolidation was, despite its growing cost and slow progress, simply short-sighted and wrong.
The arguments are not over yet. In November, the City set in motion the unusual parliamentary process that has to be completed before it can stop the Billingsgate site, which is in Poplar, adjacent to Canary Wharf in Tower Hamlets, and the Smithfield site, which lies within the City’s boundary near Farringdon, being used for their current purposes.
The legal mechanism is a Private Bill – not to be confused with a Private Member’s Bill – which received its first reading in the House of Commons last Wednesday (22 January). Following this began a “petition period”, unique to Private Bills, which will close at 5pm on Thursday (30 January).
The UK Parliament website states that “any individual, group of individuals, organisation or group of organisations affected by this bill can object to it.”
Judging by the brisk business being done by a Change.org petition whose organiser describes it as “a call to save our heritage” the City of London (Markets) Bill will be attracting considerable dissenting interest. Other types of interested party are likely to make their views known too.
After that, there could be a long wait before the future of the two markets is resolved. Existing operations at Billingsgate and Smithfield (referred to in the bill by its official name of Central London Markets) are, in any case, to continue until 2028.
Property law firm Pinsent Masons has described the meat and fish markets as “effectively fixed to the current sites at Smithfield and Billingsgate by a raft of existing UK local legislation, which imposes certain rights, restrictions and obligations as to the use of the land”.
Pinsent Masons also tells us that “unless petitioners’ right to be heard on their petition is successfully challenged by the City of London Corporation, as promoter of the bill, petitioners are able to appear before and make representations to specially convened parliamentary select committees.”
And Robbie Owen, a parliamentary agent and planning law expert with the firm, said: “The private bill process has a tendency to bring issues out of the local woodwork and therefore time will tell how controversial this measure is and what sort of a passage through parliament the bill will have.”
Owen added that the markets bill wouldn’t be passed by Parliament until this summer at the soonest and could go on for at least two years “if there are petitions raising complex issues that need to be heard”.
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