“The number of people who signed those petitions exceed 2,000,” she said.”These petition signatures were higher than some of our votes. So we just need to listen to residents.”Shrewsbury House Community Association had hoped to take on Green Garth. Anthony Okereke compared criticism of the sale to a campaign against council homes on the site […]
“The number of people who signed those petitions exceed 2,000,” she said.”These petition signatures were higher than some of our votes. So we just need to listen to residents.”Shrewsbury House Community Association had hoped to take on Green Garth. Anthony Okereke compared criticism of the sale to a campaign against council homes on the site of a community garden in west Greenwich, which was approved in 2020 and opened earlier this year.
Okereke added: “One of the petitions says ‘no flats’. There’s a housing crisis. None of us should predetermine what will come forward from those asset disposals. That would be wrong.
“You’ve said we shouldn’t predetermine an outcome. The community hasn’t come here and predetermined an outcome. All they want is a bit of time and a bit of respect. I think they deserve both.” But a Labour councillor backed local residents in her ward and warned that anger at the loss of the Greenwich Equestrian Centre – which is surrounded by farmland at the foot of Shooters Hil – plus plans to sell Green Garth, a house next to the Shrewsbury House community centre, could cost the party seats at elections in May next year.Greenwich Council’s cabinet agreed to sell the equestrian centre and Green Garth without discussion and in less than a minute in November last year to help plug a £33 million budget gap. An attempt to halt the sale was thrown out by a scrutiny panel in January, with Labour councillors backing the disposals.Okereke said the council would establish a timeline for the sale process and that it would “work with our communities where they need further assets in the community. That has to be a borough-wide discussion.”In contrast, the equestrian centre site is metropolitan open land – a protection that is similar to the Green Belt – and surrounded by Woodlands Farm, a former Co-op farm that is now leased to a charity. For many years the whole site was threatened by plans to drive a motorway through it that were not withdrawn until the 1990s.
Matt Hartley, the leader of the Conservative opposition, accused Okereke of showing a “complete lack of respect” to the residents who had come to address the council about their petitions.“But every member in this chamber – go and see what has happened in Royal Hill. Tough decisions around assets, but a tough decision that delivered on the missions we set out for our residents and with our residents.”“Now, when you go to Royal Hill, what you see is older people in work, with special education needs, in a new development where they didn’t have that before. Those are the tough decisions when it comes to assets that we as a council have to make.”The council has also been criticised for its decision to sell Green Garth, a former air-raid wardens’ base in the grounds of Shrewsbury House that was later converted into a bungalow. The community association that runs Shrewsbury House had previously been in negotiations to take on Green Garth, but was caught unawares by the council’s sudden decision to sell it.Okereke said the petitions made “honourable and fair requests” but continued: “When we had a fair and honourable request for a community garden, on Royal Hill, we didn’t give into that, sadly, we couldn’t afford to give into that, what we did is we used that asset to deliver new homes for adults with special educational needs.
Support real local news in GreenwichThe Labour leader of Greenwich Council has raised the possibility of flats being built on the site of the borough’s Olympic legacy equestrian centre, which is set to be put up for sale.The homes under construction last year. The Royal Hill site that Okereke referred to was a disused railway line that had become a car park, where development was held up by a dispute over contaminated land. Ivis Williams, a Shooters Hill Labour councillor, said the petitions – from Baker, Gray and Sally McDougal of Shrewsbury House – had been submitted by “leaders in the community”.
Responses to three separate petitions – two on the equestrian centre, one on Green Garth – were presented to a council meeting last week. In both cases, residents called for a pause in the sale processes so they could develop their own bids.The decision to close the equestrian centre has been criticised in the equestrian community as well as in the local area. Baker told councillors that there was an 18-month waiting list for just ten places at the centre’s riding school.
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The equestrian centre was opened by Princess Anne in 2013 as part of a council legacy project after Greenwich Park hosted the equestrian events at the London Olympics. The centre was run by Kent-based Hadlow College, which went bust in 2019, after which North Kent College took over. North Kent pulled out of the site in July last year without giving a reason.A written response to Baker’s petition claimed that “riding lessons were incidental to [the centre’s] primary function” as a further education college – even though Chris Roberts, the council leader at the time, said it would “introduce thousands of London children to the thrill of horse riding” when plans for the centre were first unveiled.Gray said most of the borough’s councillors were also members of the Co-operative Party, a sister party to Labour, and they should “walk it as they talk it” and follow that party’s policies on working with local communities. Barry Gray of the Woodlands Farm Trust, who had expressed fears about developments in his petition, said: “In most local authorities, this area would be a source of pride and would be cherished. Not in Greenwich, unfortunately. So we’re asking for a pause in the process and a chance to put together a plan that we can discuss with the council for the acquisition by the community of this site.”The building on Shooters Hill is now boarded up.
