London’s Smithfield Market 'set to close' after 900 years - after Dagenham move halted

By Asher McShane

@ashermcs

London’s oldest meat market could close for good, with a crucial vote on its future due to take place today.

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The City Corporation had previously planned to relocate Smithfield and Billingsgate fish market to a new site in Dagenham.

The corporation is recommending the market is shut down and that traders are offered compensation payments.

Due to cost overruns, the corporations policy committee has recommended that the £1bn relocation plan is scrapped and the market closed.

The compensation payments could reach more than £300 million, according to the Times.

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The private vote on the future of the market will is due to be held in private this afternoon.

Experts have questioned whether such a vote would be legal without a full review into how the closure would affect London’s food supply.

A letter written by Gregory Jones KC, Suzanne Ornsby KC and William Upton KC, and seen by the Times, reads: “Understanding the social and economic importance of the existing markets is vital to any decision by the court to abolish them, as is the social and economic implications of doing so. The failure to have this information available would, we are concerned, be unlawful.”

However the City Corporation said it was ’satisfied’ the vote would be legal.

Chris Hayward, Chairman of the City of London Corporation’s Policy and Resources Committee told the paper moving the market to Dagenham would be ‘unaffordable.’

Now the authority wants to turn the Smithfield site into a mixed-use cultural development alongside the London Museum and redevelop the Billingsgate site as housing.