Market could die
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NEW COVENT GARDEN market leaders fear that long term plans to make the market London's main fresh produce centre are being undermined by growing opposition to heavy lorries.
With privatisation and diversification plans in the pipeline, traders and the market authority are concerned about pressure from local councils to restrict the movements of heavy lorries, which they believe will outlive Ken Livingstone's present Greater London Council administration.
The existing fruit, vegetable and flower markets depend on night-time deliveries and trading. Around 500 lorries each night deliver at the market. Hopes are that meat and fish markets will be brought into New Covent Garden, and these will also be served by night.
The GLC's transport committee is to decide what to do about lorry bans next Wednesday, and the market authority has been pressing hard for exemption from night-time or weekend bans for traffic serving the market, although it is prepared to accept the idea of designated lorry routes into the area.
Around 3,000 people are employed at the market, and the market authority has pointed to the Wood Report's conclusion that New Covent Garden would probably not survive a ban.
The planned influx of new markets to the site would create new jobs, but would also bring more lorries into the area.
New Covent Garden has a 62acre site on the South Bank of the Thames. At present it is run by the Government-appointed market authority while the cost of the development is repaid to the Minstry of Agriculture, but privatisation is planned.
More efficient use of the land is envisaged. The market is 92 per cent full in terms of ground space used, but at least 30 per cent of this could be made available for other use if existing tenants adopted more modern wholesaling methods, market authority chairman Peter Firmston-Williams said last week. Particularly, they should invest in high racking for short term storage. Produce is normally moved within two days.
While a lorry ban threatens the market, wholesalers at New Covent Garden are also under strong pressure from changes in patterns of distribution. Direct deliveries to supermarkets and regional markets are both taking business away from the London traders.