Flats on Greenwich Ikea car park approved despite store’s legal threat

Plans for 1,251 flats on top of Greenwich Ikea’s car park have been passed by councillors – even though the Swedish furniture chain warned it may take legal action over the decision.

Greenwich Council’s planning board was split on the issue – with only three of six councillors present voting to approve the scheme. The other three, including one of the area’s local councillors, David Gardner, abstained.

Seven blocks of between nine and 20 storeys were approved, cutting the current car parking on Millennium Retail Park  from 1,066 to 860. An acoustic screen would shield lower floors from the A102, which runs alongside the site. The B&Q/Tradepoint store would be demolished but Ikea, the Odeon cinema, Sainsbury’s petrol station and the busway would remain.

The plan includes 304 homes available to those on the council’s 28,000-strong waiting list – it had not been decided whether these would be at social rent or the higher London Affordable Rent. Another 104 homes would be for shared ownership, hitting the council’s 35 per cent target for “affordable” homes. It would also include retail and leisure units, workspace, a small park and play areas dotted around the site. 

The blocks would take six years to build and could be finished by 2032, the developer said.

But Ikea has warned that it is unhappy about the loss of car parking spaces for its store, which opened in 2019. It has to agree to the scheme because it is legally entitled to 1,000 spaces in the car park, which Weybourne owns but Ikea, B&Q and Odeon have rights to use. Weybourne also owns the B&Q/Tradepoint store, but not the Ikea or cinema buildings.

The furniture chain was not represented at the meeting, but a document handed to councillors said Ikea “contends that the proposed development cannot be implemented as currently presented and considers that any decision to grant planning permission may be subject to legal challenge”.

However, Harris said that planning officers believed this was a private dispute between Ikea and Weybourne and the issue was not discussed further. 

Ikea told The Greenwich Wire on Wednesday: “We acknowledge the council’s decision to approve the planning application for this project. We remain committed to working constructively with all parties to support the best interests of both our customers and the local community.”

Ewan Grunwald, a consultant representing Weybourne, said called the scheme “a rare opportunity to bring forward a landmark development that not only delivers a significant new housing provision, but also creates a vibrant mixed use neighbourhood, high quality public spaces, and lasting social and economic benefits for this borough, whilst retaining an anchor retailer in Ikea”.

But councillors on the committee were critical of the plans for local infrastructure resulting from the scheme, raising fears that neither Transport for London nor the NHS understood the effects of the vast pace of change across the north of the borough  when consulted about what they wanted to get from developers. 

The NHS has accepted a contribution of £1.2 million, but just £60,000 would go to GP facilities in the area, with the rest going to acute care at Queen Elizabeth Hospital. Meanwhile, Transport for London requested £1.08 million to fund two extra morning peak time bus journeys, but will only get £648,000. Council officers said that TfL had not responded to requests to justify the cost.

After West Thamesmead councillor ‘Lade Hephzibah Olugbemi raised worries about development adding to gridlock in the area, planning chair Gary Dillon said: “There are up to 10,000 dwellings being built from Charlton Riverside to Morden Wharf.That equates to 25,000 people and they keep looking at each individual applications and you know, it’s not enough.

“There’s still capacity at Queen Elizabeth, but we know that Queen Elizabeth is more than doubly oversubscribed. So when, when does the NHS and TfL start looking at the bigger picture and putting the jigsaw together?

“We’re looking at six or seven of these [developments] all in the pipeline and, and they’re all going to come together in a five or six year window. Then all of a sudden there’s going to be a massive panic because the extra bus – there’s 300 people queuing for a bus that can hold 80 people. It’s not fit for purpose.” 

Representatives of Singapore-baased Weybourne, which is owned by the Brexit-backing businessman Sir James Dyson, retorted that the council could fund local improvements itself through the £14 million it would gain from the community infrastructure levy, a charge on developers.

One of them, Ben Ford, said: “It’s up to the local authority to determine which infrastructure projects it wants to allocate the funds to.”

The council’s planning officers had recommended that councillors approve the scheme. Andrew Harris, one of the officers, said that the scheme would make a “meaningful contribution to borough’s housing supply targets”, but conceded that many of the homes would have “sub-optimal daylight and sunlight levels” because of changes to accommodate a second stairwell in the taller buildings had made them bulkier.

“The development shadows itself,” Harris said, but he emphasised that the benefits “far outweighed” the problems with the scheme.

There were 17 objections, and three neighbours spoke against the scheme.  One, Michael Macey, representing the neighbourhood watch in nearby Aldeburgh Street and Fearon Street, said the council “needed to work towards sustainable housing, not just housing”.

“We don’t believe that what’s being proposed contributes to the creation of a community,” he said. “What’s being proposed is likely to diminish in liveability as time goes on because of the lack of an organic development that takes into consideration the development of the peninsula itself. 

“The developer’s not going to live in this project and some of the people who buy some of this property may never live in it.  Those of us that do live in the area are concerned about the impact of a development of this size in this area and in this place. We’re hoping that whatever gets adopted, it actually creates homes and not just houses.”

Greenwich Peninsula councillor David Gardner said that many flats in his ward had been bought off-plan by overseas buyers. After councillors pressed for a restriction to stop overseas buyers purchasing flats, Ford said it was “not something that we are aware of in other local authorities”, that such a curb  was not legally sound and it would “unnecessarily control what is already a very challenging housing market”.

Sylvia Williams, from the Greenwich Millennium Village residents’ association, pointed out that the largest green space nearby was Southern Park – which is paid for from GMV residents’ service charges. “More developments need to pay into it,” she said.

But Ford rejected the idea that residents on the new blocks should pay towards the park, or Greenwich Peninsula Ecology Park, through their service charges, saying that Weybourne’s development was “meeting and exceeding our requirements” for public and private open space for its residents.

“Therefore I don’t think we would be allocating any of our service charge for other developments in the area. Equally, if the local authority wanted to use the £40 million of CIL for improvements, that is in the local authority’s gift to do so,” he added.

“The only place you can kick a ball around is Southern Park. The poor residents of GMV pay towards it, but your residents won’t pay a penny towards it,” Gardner said. “And you won’t use it in your marketing, will you?”

When it came to the vote, councillors approved an amendment from Gardner that the bulk of £850,000 from the development go towards ripping out the Angerstein roundabout altogether rather than making it more attractive for walking and cycling. Gardner was clearly frustrated after being told during the meeting that while councillors had voted for the roundabout to go, the council’s transport officers were not pursuing the issue as a priority.

But Gardner, who called the car park “a terrible waste of space”, abstained from the vote itself. He said that while the council had an obligation to support sustainable development, and that planning rules meant the council had to look more favourably on the scheme because it was not meeting housing targets, he believed it was “overdevelopment”.

Greenwell, a Conservative councillor for Eltham Town, agreed, raising the lack of healthcare facilities. However, Dillon said he hoped there would be space for the NHS in one of the commercial units on the site. “When the demand is there, there will be vacant premises for a doctor’s surgery because I don’t think there’s enough space for any more coffee shops, that’s for sure,” he said.

Greenwich Council is due to consult on a new local plan – its own planning bible – in the coming months, and continues to be under pressure from the government and City Hall to approve new homes. 

Dillon said: “I think what this has highlighted tonight is that TfL and the NHS need to get a bit more urgency in, in their communications, especially with our officers and with our new local plan they need to get up to speed with the speed of development that they’re putting us under pressure for.

“We are looking at the government asking for 1.5 million homes [in England by 2029] and we’re looking at the mayor asking for 88,000 homes [in London each year]. They need to make sure that the infrastructure is moving at the same pace. Because what we’ve got tonight is concerns around health provision, pollution, road management, public transport, which is not down to this developer, but it is an issue for the numerous developments we’ve got going on in the same area. 

“Maybe it’s something that we, as councillors, bring up at the next meetings to, to get a bit more urgency behind infrastructure communication, and get some of these organisations around the table so that we’re not on the frontline of dealing with the public.”

Dillion, Kidbrooke Village councillor Sandra Bauer and Thamesmead Moorings councillor Olu Babatola voted for the scheme, while Gardner, Greenwell and Olugbemi abstained. 

Updated at 8.10pm to correct the CIL figure to £14 million and on Friday to correct the names of Weybourne’s speakers, and later again to clarify the number of parking spaces that would remain and some land ownership details.

🗣️ Discuss the future of local news in SE London to mark Indie News Week. We’ll be at Deptford Lounge, off Deptford High Street on Thursday June 19 (get free tickets).

📩 Follow The Greenwich Wire on Bluesky, Facebook, LinkedIn or Threads. You can also sign up for WhatsApp alerts – or subscribe to our emails through the blue box above.