Nick Raynsford MP has said that councillors were “absolutely wrong” to reject the redevelopment of Greenwich Market and says that he has “no doubt” that the hotel will be built. The comments came in an extensive interview for Greenwich.co.uk which we are publishing in three parts all this week.
The highly controversial market proposals were unanimously rejected by councillors earlier this year, but Raynsford believes that they will now go through on appeal:
“Having read rather carefully the officer report and I speak as a former minister for planning so I did have to take decisions on issues like this, I think the Hospital have got good grounds for an appeal”
“In that situation when a scheme has been strongly supported by the officers and it is rejected by the politicians then very often inspectors tend to agree with the professionals and grant the appeal.
“I think this thing will be built. I have no doubt.”
Asked whether he had spoken to Council leader Chris Roberts since he rejected the proposals, he replied:
“Yes I have and I told him I think he was wrong. He was absolutely wrong on this issue. I don’t always agree with him.”
Raynsford believes that “vested interests” misled the public about the scheme:
“The proposals didn’t get explained as they should have been to the public who were apprehensive, but you also had some people who had a vested interest in trying to present this as a Bluewater type scheme rather than what it was.”
Greenwich.co.uk: What do you mean by “vested interests”?
“Well Andrew Gilligan had turned his mind against the thing right from the outset. He was totally hostile to it, and he literally would not listen. His view was this was a totally awful scheme, and the article he wrote for the Evening Standard showed an illustration or Turnpin lane, and the argument was, this is all going to get knocked down. Nonsense. The only thing that was going to be knocked down were those steel girders that hold up the roof at the moment which actually protrude into Turnpin lane and make it a less easy area to negotiate. And the only change would have been rather more elegant supports holding the roof up. And that to my mind is not the product of somebody who has looked at it seriously.”
Raynsford still believes that the hotel will bring much needed economic benefits to the town:
“Greenwich has a huge international reputation but it doesn’t get the full benefit of that. It is known to be a beautiful place, but on the whole the tourism revenue we get is the revenue of a day trip destination. People come to London, and they say that one of the things they must do is go to Greenwich. They’ll probably take a boat down the river, they’ll spend five or six hours in Greenwich, go to the Maritime Museum, perhaps go into the park, to the Painted Hall and the chapel and perhaps the Observatory and then they’ll go back. So they come back to central London and they’ve probably spent £10-15 in Greenwich and they’ve spent hundreds of pounds [in the centre]”
Asked whether Greenwich Hospital will appeal the council’s decision he replied:
“Of course it is up to them, but I think they are considering whether they are going to make a fresh application or whether to appeal. Frankly I think that if they appeal they have a very good chance of success, because the officer report which is the serious professional appraisal, gave it very strong support… So a good scheme and I think that there is every chance that it will be built in due course.”
In part two of this interview, to be published tomorrow, read what Nick Raynsford has to say about the “bogus claims” of Olympic protestors and the “cult of personality” at Greenwich Time.
Greenwich & Woolwich Green candidate Andy Hewett has issued a response to this interview today:
“Mr Raynsford’s comments in this interview are baffling, and to defy
the wishes of the people of Greenwich looks like electoral suicide,” Andy said.
“This development would have damaged the character of the market and
harmed the small traders who depend on it for their livelihood.
“The last thing Greenwich needs is yet another ill-thought through
development, but this seems okay in Mr Raynsford’s book.”
Full Green Party response here
Does he seriously think that tourists would want to stay here anyway as an alternative to central london? Go to the greenwich theatre instead of the West End? Eat at tai won mein instead of chinatown? Can you imagine anyone in their right mind planning this sort of trip? He needs locking up.
To be fair, I don’t think he was suggesting that tourists would go to those places *instead* of Central London. Personally I don’t think that the Market Hotel development should go ahead, but I can understand his argument about the need to attract more longer term visits to Greenwich.
Funny isn’t it, that guilty parties accuse others of the crime for which they’re responsible? For Nick Raynsford is the only person in this matter who has a “vested interest”
I happen, for what it’s worth, to be the person who used the word “Bluewater” in Andrew Gilligan’s Standard piece; I was not referring to the architecture per se, but the philosophy of ‘improving’ the market by removing the cobbled floor, demolishing victorian and edwardian buildings to make way for a garbage compactor, and hiking the rents for market traders: airbrushing away the market’s texture and making it bland and soul-less, like, yes, Bluewater. Of the dozens or hundreds of people I spoke to in the early days, not one of them supported these kind of changes. Via the Greenwich Phantom site, and Greenwich Mercury, even before the Standard piece, we managed to get the first 50 or so letters of objection in. Our vested interest was that we live and work in Greenwich, in many cases in the market itself.
Raynsford contends Gilligan fantasised that Turnpin Lane would be demolished; of course, nowhere in his reports does it state that. Rather, the developers attempted to obfuscate many of the changes, such as demolition of Victorian Stable blocks (not mentioned in the consultation) and the claim that “market traders had asked for the cobbles to be ripped out”. Yeah, right.
Of course, on further investigation, the Hotel turned out even higher than was suggested, looming over Joseph Kay’s landmark buildings. Even if, like me,you looked through a box full of printouts, there were no sight-lines showing its actual height and effect on its vastly more significant neighbouyrs.
If Nick Raynsford is an expert on building, and a friend of Greenwich Hospital, he should have been addressing these issues, rather than trying to obfuscate and rush the scheme through or, as he is now, trying to personify the battle as being the enlightened against Andrew Gilligan. It’s a cliché to accuse politicians of being complacent and out of touch with those they represent, but it’s one Nick Raynsford seems determined to prove perpetuate.
I did attend this planning meeting and I was shocked to hear the proposals about Greenwich Market. The market is an asset to Greenwich and I was surprised they wanted to change the character of it.
A hotel is just non-sense, they had it in their mind that droves of tourist would stay in Greenwich instead of Central London. I do recommend my friends to visit greenwich by boat trip from Tower Hill for a day trip, but never never ever to stay. Most of the tourist attractions are in Central London.
They are building so many more hotels in Greenwich and there is bound to be over capacity. Sure, the Olympics is not far off, but that is a 16 day event. Do you build a brand new hotel for 16 days?. In my mind Nick Raysford is over rating the prospects of this hotel.
The whole Market deveopement seems to revolve around the hotel and its ‘If we build it, they will come’ rationale.
I’m no hotel expert so whether there really is latent demand overseas to stay in a hotel in the middle of a traffic island, I cannot say.
However, a substantial number of the people shopping in the Market are not tourists in the holiday making sense, but Londoners having a day out at a genuinely interesting market. And ‘sanitising’ the market will make it less interesting for those people, who will stop coming, and will stop spending their money in Greenwich.
Yes it would be great if tourists stayed overnight and spent loads in Greenwich (although I’m not sure it’s on of our most pressing ‘needs’, AdamB), but like it or not, we are just a picturesque suburb on the periphery of a great city – it’s not going to happen no matter how many rain dances we do.
It’s exactly by losing sight of this that white elephants are born – and I don’t want one in our town centre.
It is very true that Greenwich has world class attractions that attract tourists. What now needs to happen is that the town centre is bought up to a level that makes it a worthy setting for these cultural venues. I really don’t think we need a 5th hotel in Greenwich just yet but we do need better cafes and restaurants, interesting and characterful pubs and bars, cultural facilities that add to the buzz of the town.
The way things are going now tourists will want to avoid the empty shops and boozers and grid-locked streets of the town and make a hasty bee line from the Cutty Sark and Pier to the NMM and Observatory.
The thing is with the market that tourists, like the locals, actually LIKE it and don’t want it reduced in size to make way for a money-spinning hotel development that will further erode the character of the town. It seems that Greenwich Hospital and Nick Raynsford just don’t get it but people don’t come to Greenwich to admire the latest in off the shelf urban shopping centre development. I also think that the majority of people that live here actually LIKE the town and market too (although we are all obviously misguided and incapable of independent thought preferring to wait for Andrew Gilligan to tell us what we can and cannot like, according to Mr Raynsford)
The problem with development in Greenwich is that we can all look at what happened in the commercial areas of the town to get a taste of the future. Want a taste of the new market development? Then take a look at the mini-me Lewisham High Street (DLR alley) or the paving stone “gardens” of Cutty Sark Gardens
What the town needs, in my opinion, is support for local traders, cultural tourism and creative industries, development of the market as a community and tourist attraction. How about a food market that will pull locals in as well as add buzz and vitality to the area?
On the plus side I’m pleased to see a new art gallery opening next to Rhodes and that Inside have taken over the Guilford. Now fingers crossed for some decent inexpensive cafes and cutting edge cultural activities (Yes, I know there is plenty of that in Deptford but would be nice to see some here too)
One wonders why Rainsford is no longer planning minister! One can only hope that this gross overdevelopment is indeed buried. One hopes that the market will be upgraded. Have a look at the refurbished parts of Borough Market. A new transparent roof covering, repainted girders, replacement of the concrete block paving around the original cobbles with similar granite sets and you’ve done all that’s required. As for the surrounding buildings, they could certainly be upgraded for shops with multilevel retail space or maybe offices above but please no hotel towering over the historic buildings! Space for a food mall anywhere? Today one could hardly move the market is so popular with Greenwich locals. HANDS OFF OUR MARKET!