In short:
- Mo-Sys, which provides special effects for film and TV, was lined up to take on the old Plumstead power station in White Hart Road in 2021.
- The council had agreed to part-fund its move from Morden Wharf in Greenwich, which is being redeveloped.
- But the deal has collapsed and the company may now leave the borough.
- The power station project was part of a wider regeneration project in Plumstead which has been criticised by councillors.
An £8 million plan to bring a special effects film studio to Plumstead has collapsed after Greenwich Council pulled out of the project.
Greenwich would have paid up to £4.2 million to bring Mo-Sys Engineering, which provides camera and special effects services for film and TV, to a Grade II-listed former power station off White Hart Road.
The debacle leaves Mo-Sys looking for a new home as it will have to leave its current base at Morden Wharf, on the Greenwich Peninsula, in February.
Morden Wharf has long been earmarked for redevelopment, with plans for 1,500 homes there approved in 2021. The council approached Mo-Sys with the power station proposal in an attempt to keep it in the area. Mo-Sys is now looking at alternative sites in other boroughs.
Mo-Sys, which was to have match-funded the council’s investment, produces the technology behind virtual studios and robotic cameras for film and television. The technology company LG bought a stake in the business last month.
It planned to open eight studio stages in Plumstead, and had promised to create 16 new jobs and host 16 start-up businesses after moving in.
The council’s cabinet agreed to the 150-year lease in February 2022, delegating negotiations to Pippa Hack, the town hall’s director of regeneration.
“Together, Mo-Sys and the council will build a globally respected media hub and centre of film production with wide-ranging positive impacts on the Plumstead area,” councillors were told at the time.
Talks took longer than expected because of changes in staff at the council and a slowdown in business at Mo-Sys because of the Hollywood writers’ strike.
But Hack told councillors in July last year that an agreement was “close”, while Mo-Sys filed a planning application the same month. The council had even spent money on improving White Hart Road, the street leading to the power station.
Mo-Sys said that agreements had been finalised and had been waiting for the deal to be ratified, but the council suddenly pulled out in August.
While Labour councillors were told about the end of the project last month, until now it has only been hinted at in public, when Greenwich included the site in a list of properties for disposal to be agreed at a cabinet meeting on Wednesday afternoon. The disposal plan was agreed with no discussion of the power station, and the council is now looking for a new leaseholder to take it on.
A Mo-Sys spokesperson said: “Being a company with a global reach, Mo-Sys would have been a major player in revitalising the area, especially with LG’s investment signalling confidence in the company’s future.
“Mo-Sys has to leave its current meanwhile-use premises at Morden Wharf by February 2025. Now that Mo-Sys is considering collaborations elsewhere, it seems like a missed opportunity for Plumstead and Greenwich, as this project could have boosted the local economy and attracted international attention.”
A Greenwich Council spokesperson said: “Plumstead Power Station was and remains a key part of the regeneration of Plumstead which started with the council’s £16 million investment in a new leisure facility and refurbished library, and has continued with various public realm and shopfront improvements as well as new council homes on Speranza Street.
“Despite negotiating with Mo-Sys since 2021, we have been unable to reach an agreement and therefore it is recommended that the council goes out to market to ensure that the best consideration for this asset is secured.”
The building was opened in 1903 as a generator and refuse incinerator for the old Metropolitan Borough of Woolwich, powering street lighting and homes. It later became a council depot and has most recently been used by Crossrail.
Most of its original interiors are said to be intact. Mo-Sys’s plans included refurbishing the building and reinstating bricked-up windows and doorways.
Some £2.4 million for the project would have come from an agreement with Berkeley Homes, which is building 1,750 new homes nearby. Another £330,000 would have come from the mayor of London’s Good Growth Fund, which had put £2.6 million into projects in Plumstead.
The pans to improve parts of the area were announced after a short-lived residents’ party, the Plumstead Party, was set up in response to perceived neglect of the area, challenging Labour in the 2018 council elections.
But the council’s spending of City Hall money in Plumstead has been questioned by councillors, who complained about the money spent on consultants and that work in the high street was not done or maintained properly. The council said that work had to be scaled back because of cost increases.
The collapse of the power station deal is the latest fiasco to hit Greenwich’s attempts to become a centre for creative businesses, and follows the failure of its third try at being named London borough of culture.
Four years ago a deal to lease the historic Borough Hall in west Greenwich to the theatre company Selladoor collapsed. The council secretly sold the building earlier this year, and the developer Lita Homes is now planning to build a hotel.
And in 2021 it admitted that the new cultural hub Woolwich Works had gone £14 million over its publicised £31 million budget. The trust set up to run Woolwich Works was later bailed out with a £2 million loan from the council and a secret £300,000 “sponsorship” deal with a council-owned company, with its initial business model criticised.
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