Ken Livingstone: Shepherd's Bush Market should be saved, slams Council

Pie & Mash for Ken

Ken Livingstone told me today he suspected personal relationships were at work between Council Leader Stephen Greenhalgh and the men in charge of Orion, the developers set to demolish the row of historic shops on Goldhawk Road as part of the redevelopment of the Market.

Over a plate of pie n mash, what else, at Cookes' Pie & Mash shop which has stood on the site for the best part of a century, Livingstone insisted to me that "distinctive parts of London" should be preserved. He decried the plans to demolish the row of shops and suspected that the personal relationships were at work between the men at the top of our Council and Orion the developers - why else, he asked, would the Council have changed their procedures to accommodate Orion?

Ken chats to Traders

In response to my opinion that the Market definately needed regeneration the Labour candidate agreed, but said that there were allternatives that did not involve what he called "flattening everything". The current plans were not real regeneration and would only lead to a boutique market, without the area's present character, he said. He urged those Market traders and shopkeepers determined to resist our Council, who themselves have won a judicial review into the plans, to find an architect to work pro bono to come up with alternative plans that would presrve the existing buildings.

One of the owners of the Pie & Mash shop explained to Mr Livingstone, and Andy Slaughter who had made the visit with Ken, that the shop had been in her family since 1934 and she saw no reason why they should be evicted, and made to move into to what the developers call "improved" premises. Mr Livingstone sympathised but said that as a candidate he could not make pronouncements one way or the other over every planning decision before becoming Mayor if he won the election. He had to be fair, he said, before cheekily adding "but you can make a guess about where my instincts are going to be"

How the Council & Developers Orion want Goldhawk Rd to look - minus the shops

It now seems confirmed that Council Leader Stephen Greenhalgh's promise, made at this meeting last December, to uphold the wishes of the tenants of those shops not to demolish them if that was their wish - is set to be quietly dropped.

Legal battles have already started in the court with the market traders and shop owners already having won a judicial review of the plans, which would see the current market placed underneath seven floors of luxury flats. There are no buildings of comparable size anywhere around, so the new tower would dominate both the market and its surrounding area.

Despite some wobbles in their campaign, the shopkeepers of the Goldhawk Road have already proved themselves to be formidable opponents to our Council and Orion. And we saw with the ruling on Shepherd's Bush Green recently that the Council can be forced to curtail at least some of it's excesses in court. So perhaps this unique corner of the Bush isn't doomed just yet.

Time will tell.