Four Greenwich councillors are objecting to music being played at a street food market in Cutty Sark Gardens – with one saying that residents are already resorting to sleeping pills because of noise from buskers.
The Labour councillors, who represent Creekside and Greenwich Park wards, say the market is already breaking rules on playing music in the area and their town hall should be taking more action.
The Greenwich Hospital charity, which owns much of the town centre, wants to add live and recorded music to its street food market between noon and 4pm on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays all year round.
“It will be a small-scale music setup playing in dual or trial,using a low-capacity amplifier with one speaker,” the charity – which also owns Greenwich Market – said in its application. “Some of the music will consist of only acoustic guitar and one singer.”
Recorded music would be a “small DJ background music with small speakers” kept to 65 decibels, the charity added.
Cutty Sark Gardens is overlooked by the Meridian Estate – council blocks built in the 1930s, two decades before the tea clipper arrived as a tourist attraction.
Creekside councillors Majella Anning and Calum O’Byrne Mulligan, and Greenwich Park councillors Aidan Smith and Pat Slattery, say that locals have had enough of music in Cutty Sark Gardens. Fourteen residents also submitted objections.
O’Byrne Mulligan, whose ward covers the Meridian Estate, said in a submission to a licensing hearing due to take place on July 8 that the plans represented “a public nuisance”, with the stage area just 20 metres from residents’ windows.
“I already receive a considerable number of complaints as a ward councillor from residents of the Meridian Estate, particularly those residing in Rockfield and Coltman Houses, arising from noise from amplified and non-amplified music in Cutty Sark Gardens,” he said.
“Many residents work night shifts or have young children, and as such the proposed timings represent an acute nuisance. Further, I have had reports from some residents that due to the current levels of noise arising from the gardens they have had to resort to sleeping pills – as noise, including illegal amplified noise, often continues well beyond permitted hours due to limited enforcement.”
Visitors to Cutty Sark Gardens also use the council estate’s bin store as a toilet, O’Byrne Mulligan said. “I would have concerns about the potential for this to increase should there be a live performance area immediately adjacent,” he said.
“These residents are not visiting tourists who can pass by after a few minutes,” Anning said. “They will be trapped with amplified sound for hours.”
Smith, whose ward covers Cutty Sark Gardens, said amplified music from the tourist hotspot had “been a blight on the lives of neighbouring residents in both wards for many years”.
Busking licences were first proposed in Greenwich in 2021 and introduced the following year. But Smith said residents were still suffering from noise, with buskers using amplification in breach of their licence and stallholders playing recorded music.
“This behaviour and the complaints have not been sufficiently addressed by either market staff or council enforcement officers and have occurred on multiple occasions,” he said.
“I therefore have little faith that the proposed timing and noise limits will be adhered to and I do not have the confidence in the applicant to ensure that this will be the case.”
Though Smith joined his colleagues in objecting, he suggested that temporary licences could be given during the summer for the operator to prove itself.
While the Greenwich Hospital application is for music all year round, there are other, more restrictive licences for the space.
Greenwich Council itself holds a licence for live and recorded music in the open space, dating back to the Olympics in 2012. However, this is only allowed to be used 16 times a year, while another market operator has permission for music seven times a year. The Greenwich & Docklands International Festival can hold events three times a year.
Like many parts of London that are popular with tourists, Greenwich has often struggled to reconcile the money that visitors bring in – estimated at £1.87 billion across the borough last year – with the needs of neighbours. Last year the Trinity Laban music college objected to its landlord, the Old Royal Naval College, holding a music festival on its campus.
Some 19 million people visited the borough of Greenwich in 2023, the Visit Greenwich agency reported in April, up two million on the previous year and just shy of the 20 million recorded in 2019, before the pandemic struck. The growth includes attractions on the Greenwich Peninsula and elsewhere, such as Eltham Palace, as well as Greenwich town centre.
A panel of councillors will discuss the issue at a licensing sub-committee on July 8, with a decision announced later that week.
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