Greenwich Council and its leader Anthony Okereke have been accused of breaking a pledge to consider selling its Olympic legacy equestrian centre to a community group.
The Greenwich Equestrian Centre, in Shooters Hill was opened by Princess Anne a year after Greenwich Park was used for horse-riding events in the London Games.
But the centre has been closed since July 2024, when the college that ran it pulled out, and in October that year the Labour council’s cabinet decided in under a minute to sell the centre to plug a multi-million pound hole in its budget.
When the centre opened, Chris Roberts, the council leader at the time, said it would “introduce thousands of London children to the thrill of horse riding”. But the council has refused to list it as an asset of community value, claiming it had not ”furthered the social wellbeing or social interest of the local community”.
Okereke – who said the council needs to take “hard and tough decisions” – has previously suggested that the site, which is surrounded by farmland, could be developed into flats.
The row over the sale led to Ivis Williams, a Labour councillor, resigning after she was put under investigation for publicly supporting community concerns rather than party policy. The Green Party’s Tamasin Rhymes won the resulting by-election, in which the Labour candidate criticised the campaign to save the centre.
In October the cabinet member for regeneration at the time, Majid Rahman, agreed to meet campaigners who want to take on the centre. This meeting – described as a “ray of light” by one campaigner – took place that month, but since then Rahman has been replaced in his role by Okereke.
Now the council has broken a pledge to discuss a possible transfer with the group and Sport England, according to Tao Baker, one of the campaigners trying to reopen it.
Sport England, which helped fund the site, must consent to any change of use.
Baker was allowed to address Wednesday night’s council meeting to outline her concerns by Greenwich’s ceremonial mayor Linda Bird – a right that has now been taken away from the mayor under controversial changes that were approved later that evening.
“This is a decision, a decision not to engage, a decision not to meet, and a decision to exclude your community,” Baker told the meeting.
“We have delivered everything asked of us, a robust, fully developed, multipurpose proposal.
“We are not asking for money, we are offering a sustainable model where the community raises funding for a facility built for the community. The community runs the facility under a charity structure with qualified people that we have, and the community pays the council for a community asset transfer.
“This council talks about financial pressure and debt, yet refuses to engage with the one proposal that solves that problem.”
Addressing Okereke, she said: “Leader of the council – this sits with you. After two years of trying to engage, after a formal commitment and after a written refusal to meet, what exactly is preventing you from sitting down with your own community? Because this is no longer about timing. This is about willingness.
“We voted in all of you councillors and we are watching. The solution is here. The support is here. The community is here. So I’ll leave you with this: if this council refuses to meet with its own community, then who exactly are you serving?”
Baker was supported by Conservative leader Matt Hartley, who said local people had been “treated appallingly”.
“All the community has asked is for a meeting, to be engaged, to be involved and to collaborate with the council to design something new for the future,” he said. “They’ve asked for a pause and the time and space and frankly, the respect from this council that is supposed to serve that community.”
Rhymes paid tribute to Baker and said that neighbouring Woodlands Farm, which is backing the campaign, had been successful at winning money for facilities and “the possibility of having more of that at the equestrian centre, if we are bold enough to back this move, is one we should not miss out on”.
But Okereke did not address Baker’s points and continued to defend the decision to sell the site.
“The asset disposals that we have taken to auction are as a result of trying to make sure that this council can remain financially viable,” he said. “And whilst that is tough and challenging, and while we have had to consider asset sales it is because this council has been defunded.
“We are the council that has kept libraries open, has kept a functioning youth service going, and is investing in it … where were the voices of this Conservative opposition when the government took away £150 million from this council and said to us, sell your assets to survive? They sit here in objection to our very survival as a local authority when we are trying to provide excellent services for our residents.”
Okereke said “hard and tough decisions” were helping protect adult social care services, to applause from Labour councillors.
In July The Greenwich Wire reported claims that the Army had taken an interest in the site. We can now reveal that military officials wrote to Labour councillor Leo Fletcher in January last year, according to documents released under freedom of information laws.
Talks have taken place since then, but it is not clear what the Army’s interest is or how far any discussions have progressed.
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