Developers are planning to unveil their new plans for Enderby Wharf in east Greenwich, on land that was home to notorious plans to build a cruise liner terminal.

The property giant Criterion Capital, owned by the billionaire entrepreneur Arif Aziz, bought the land in July 2019 after the collapse of the plans over air pollution concerns. 

Most of Enderby Wharf was redeveloped with hundreds of homes in the mid-2010s, but a plot of land to the north – Enderby Place – was left over for the abandoned liner terminal and three tower blocks of between 25 and 32 storeys.

The still-live permission for tall blocks at Enderby Place was a factor in the approval of blocks of up to 36 storeys at the adjacent Morden Wharf in September 2021.

Now Criterion says it plans to “increase the provision of affordable housing, add much more extensive high-quality and accessible open space, and better integrate the site with neighbouring developments”.

Site of Enderby Place
The Enderby Place site was used as a storage yard after homes on the rest of the site were completed. Image: The Greenwich Wire

The cruise liner development as approved in 2015 would have had 477 homes, but just 47 would have been available for people on the housing waiting list with 28 for shared ownership.

A public exhibition of the new plans for Enderby Place will be held at Rothbury Hall on Mauritius Road on Monday October 9 from 4pm to 8pm. A Zoom conference will also be held the following weekend.

Criterion is best known for owning properties around Leicester Square – including the Odeon Luxe cinema and the Global Radio headquarters that are home to Capital, Heart and LBC. It also owns the former London Pavillion at Piccadilly Circus as well as a string of other developments around London.

The cruise liner terminal was approved in 2011 and again in 2015, but scrapped in 2018. Image: London City Cruise Port

The cruise liner terminal was a pet project of long-serving former Greenwich Council leader Chris Roberts and his successor from 2014, Denise Hyland, while Boris Johnson backed the proposals as Conservative mayor of London. 

Plans were originally passed without controversy in 2011, with developers hoping to have it open for the Olympics. Increased awareness of cruise liners’ contribution to air pollution meant that revised plans put forward four years later – including the three towers – were met with a storm of protest.

But the plans were still approved, with Hyland ridiculed after declaring at the planning meeting that she had been to Southampton to see the terminal there and could not see any pollution.

After a cross-party campaign and pressure from Johnson’s successor Sadiq Khan, the plans were scrapped after Danny Thorpe became council leader in 2018. Thorpe also pledged that senior councillors would no longer be able to sit in planning meetings under his watch.

Cruise liners still dock at the mouth of Deptford Creek, despite worries about the pollution they bring. There is no ultra-low emissions zone on the Thames, and cruise ships pumped four times more harmful sulphuric gases into the atmosphere in Europe than passenger vehicles did last year, according to research from the lobby group Transport & Environment. 

More details of Criterion’s plans for Enderby Place can be found at enderbyplace.co.uk.