News: Billingsgate and Smithfield markets move confirmed as City unveils regeneration programme

The City of London Corporation has confirmed its plans to redevelop the land currently occupied by the Smithfield and Billingsgate wholesale food markets, along with pledging to help the markets’ traders find a new location “within the M25” while also working with Barking & Dagenham Council to make alternative use of the Dagenham Dock site, which had previously been earmarked as a suitable place for the markets to move to.

The City says the decision, taken on Thursday by its Court of Common Council, “lays the foundations” for the long-term realisation of its “Destination City” strategy, which includes further transforming the Smithfield buildings, listed Victorian structures close to Farringdon station, into a “cultural and commercial hub”. The new London Museum, formerly the Museum of London, is scheduled to open in part of the site next year.

The Billingsgate site, which is in Poplar in Tower Hamlets, next to Canary Wharf, would accommodate up to 4,000 new homes under the City’s plans. An 11-person Markets Site Regeneration Programme team will also look at how the Dagenham site can still be used for providing “high quality jobs for local people”, the City said. They will continue to operate from their present locations until at least 2028.

The Common Council’s approval of the regeneration programme confirms the City’s decision taken in November to close the two food markets, which have operated under its ownership in the capital from various locations for centuries, and to abandon the idea of moving them to the 42-acre Dagenham site on the north bank of the Thames, which over time has been the base for industries including logistics, coal off-loading, shipbuilding and power generation. They

Concerns have been expressed by some about the security of food supplies across the capital, given the historic role of the markets as places depended on by retailers and restaurants for reliable quality and prices for their customers.

Responding to the these, the City commissioned a study by the consultancy Artefact, published in February, which concluded that such concerns are “largely overstated” because “the majority of UK meat and fish consumption flows through supermarket channels that operate independently of Smithfield and Billingsgate” and because “alternative wholesalers” ensure supply chains to caterers and restaurants.

Interviewed by On London last month, Chris Hayward, chairman of the City’s key policy and resources committee and its political leader since 2022, said that much of the impetus for change had come from the market trader organisations themselves telling him “we want modern buildings, we can’t go on where we are, we can’t expand our businesses where we are”.

He described their position as having “matured as time went on” and reaching “a stage where they said to us, we think it’s in our interests and you think it’s in your interests that we now go and do our own thing”, with the City no longer being their landlord.

Hayward also said, referring to Smithfield, that having “diesel lorries trundling through the streets of London”, carrying meat to and fro, could no longer be justified in the light of the City’s climate action strategy.

The Dagenham site was acquired by the City in 2018 from Barking Power Ltd, and announced as a potential option for bringing Smithfield, Billingsgate and, initially, the Leyton-based New Spitalfields fruit and vegetable market, also owned by the City, together in the same place.

Councillor James Tumbridge, at that time chairman of the City’s markets board, a committee responsible for overseeing all matters relating to the markets, expressed delight with the purchase, describing it as “a part of our vision for London and for our markets”.

However, a 2024 markets board document says that members heard that a design proposed for Dagenham Docks scheme was not favoured by traders who were, by then, in any case, “not satisfied” with a move there at all.

There was also some internal criticism of the City’s handling of the markets issue. Confidential minutes of a markets board meeting held last year seen by On London record its members agreeing with one of their number that “the state of play in relation to the Markets Co-Location Programme was a failure for the City Corporation from a governance perspective” given that the programme had been active for several years but there was “still no resolution that suited all parties”.

The markets board membership includes Greg Lawrence, member and chairman of the Smithfield Market Tenants’ Association, and Tony Lyons, chairman of the London Fish Merchants’ Association. Lawrence said in November that moving from Smithfield would be “sad” but doing so would be “better” for traders in the end. Both he and Lyons have been invited by On London to talk about the situations with Smithfield, Billingsgate and the groups of traders they represent.

Hayward strongly disagreed that the abandonment of the Dagenham Dock plan reflected badly on the the corporation, pointing to the cost impacts of the pandemic and inflation. “The bottom line is that I arrived at the view, as the leader of the corporation, [and] with the support of my policy committee, that the Dagenham Dock site had become unaffordable”. He emphasised, too, that “collectively all our capital projects have become more expensive,” including those already underway.

The original cost of the Dagenham Docks project was put at £741.4 million, of which £229.9 million was spent on buying the site and spending what Hayward described as “a few million” on remediating it. Later, the cost was estimated to have soared to close to £1 billion. The remaining £511.4 million will be returned to the City’s estate budget, which is contributing to other schemes such as a new law courts project at Salisbury Square off Fleet Street.

It was announced in December that a compensation package had been agreed with the City “that financially supports the Traders to relocate to new premises”. The Smithfield association said that 70 per cent of its members had agreed to move together to a new site and the others would “transfer their trade” to other members. The Billingsgate group said that 90 per cent of its members had “indicated that they will continue trading when market operations cease at the current site”.

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