Greenwich Council’s blueprint for the borough’s future should be strengthened to provide more protection for pubs, campaigners who want to reopen Charlton’s White Swan say.
The consultation on Greenwich’s Local Plan closes on Sunday, and the chair of White Swan Music & Arts, Suzanne Hunt, wants residents to write to the council to ensure policies to protect pubs include neighbourhood locals as well as town centre bars.
Hunt’s campaign has so far raised £85,000 to put a deposit down on the Swan, which closed in 2020 after the management struggled with the freeholder’s rent demands. It is also hoping to win a £30,000 grant from the council’s Neighbourhood Growth Fund pot, with a public vote closing on Sunday.
Plans to turn the pub into a supermarket and flats were refused by a planning inspector in June 2024, in part down to Greenwich’s policy insisting that developers must prove a pub is unviable. The pub is in poor condition after being squatted and used as a cannabis farm, with the inspector criticising the owner for its neglect of the bar area.
The Local Plan sets out the borough’s development policies for the next 40 years. All planning applications are assessed against both the Local Plan and the mayor’s London Plan: departing from the plan can lead to proposals being rejected, either by the council or an inspector.
The old Local Plan, which was passed in 2014, included protection for pubs in a section about the borough’s economy. But the new plan, which will need to face a public hearing and assessment by an inspector before it is passed, includes pub policies in sections about the visitor economy and town centres.
Hunt fears that developers could exploit this to target quieter pubs outside tourist areas and town centres, like the Swan and the Duke of Greenwich, the old Vanbrugh Tavern that closed last year.
The new plans include pubs as part of policies designed to “maintain and enhance the attractiveness of the Royal Borough of Greenwich as a visitor destination” and about maintaining town centres. It specifically refers to Greenwich, Eltham and Woolwich town centres, as well as Blackheath Village and the area around North Greenwich station.
“You would be forgiven for thinking the sole purpose of a pub in the Royal Borough of Greenwich is to attract tourists,” Hunt said.
“Right now the section on pubs is tucked away under the tourist section. The town hall planners have not considered the impact on our communities, the loss of space to meet friends or the overall destruction of our neighbourhoods: just the impact it has on tourists and it will be over a decade before they think again – unless you change it.”
Hunt has asked the campaign’s supporters to email the council and their local councillors to suggest a new section on the retention of community spaces and pubs, with a presumption on retaining and restoring them, and for the council to include a supplementary document, as Camden has, on the importance of leisure and pubs which favours local communities.
She also said the council should recognise the importance of local community-owned pubs and facilities as creating jobs and saving local neighbourhoods from decline.
“Ask them to recognise the need to save the few pubs we have left in our community, not just the tourist attractions,” Hunt said.
The Local Plan also covers policies on HMOs and what sites are suitable for development in the borough.
The consultation, which closes on Sunday, is on the Commonplace website. Residents can also email the council directly on local-plan-consultation[at]royalgreenwich.gov.uk.
• Plans to formally convert The Plum Tree micropub in Plumstead into a beauty salon were approved by a planning committee last week. The premises had already been converted after the pub closed in January 2025 and the application was a respective one.
Planning officers said the micropub did not qualify for protection under London planning rules because it lacked “heritage, social, cultural or economic value”, having been a small venue that only opened in 2019 that promoted itself as a “beer shop” rather than a pub, and with three other pubs nearby.
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