Ta-da! Just when you thought Newham Council could not get any worse at squandering public finances and taxes during a time of hardship for many local families, the Council have unveiled their latest offer – drum roll – a glorified wood and tin “shack”, that cost tax papers a whopping £1million. Yes, you heard it here, £1million pounds for replacing two functional canopies, that did not need replacing.
Friends of Queen’s Market ask, “what kind of value is the Council providing to the citizens of Newham?“
PHOTO (above): after months of delays, no accountability from officers, and non-stop excuses, the much anticipated new timber canopies have been revealed… resembling, a wood and tin “shack”.
All decoration and no substance
Tonnes of public money had gone to private consultants who have delivered nothing that local shoppers and traders have asked for. Traders, shoppers, shopkeepers and local people put their trust in the Council and its elected representatives when they say they were cajoled into participating in the co-create process. Where locals asked for a refurbished market roof and flooring, officers reassured them, but now years later they are lumbered with pigeon-netting that pigeons can still get into, credit card toilets, and now this wood and tin monstrosity. The Council’s consultants then hurried this through a planning application. Locals were not told nor signposted to it, and now we are in many ways in a worse position than before, and £1million down. The Council’s co-creation process has been extremely demoralising for those who took part in it, and it has broken trust with citizens whose collective taxes pay for the wages of the decision makers, making a mockery of our public finances.
Read article: “New data has revealed Newham has among the highest number of council bosses paid more than £100,000 in the country” (Newham Recorder, 11th April 2025): https://www.newhamrecorder.co.uk/news/25063744.newham-council-sits-near-top-town-hall-rich-list/
“With 46 people, Newham was the borough with the seventh most council staff earning more than £100,000, an increase of six staff from the previous year.”
Read Tax Payers Alliance findings article here (1st April 2025):
https://www.taxpayersalliance.com/town_hall_rich_list_2025
ABOVE (extract form the Town Hall Rich List): Newham Council, one of London’s poorest boroughs pays it’s Executives huge salaries, and nobody really knows what they do. Meanwhile, rents for small traders have increased inside of Queen’s Market.
Friends of Queen’s Market ask: “who chooses these private consultants for Queen’s Market, and are there links to the present cohort of Council’s officers?”
No natural lighting in the new tin and wood “shack”
A long time trader at Queen’s Market said: “Natural light use to come in through the front two canopies of the market, and now there’s no natural lighting coming in. We are at a net loss. Now you have to switch on bright lights, wasting more electricity. This is contrary to what we were promised through the Council’s co-create process. The entire lighting in the market has been a disaster. We have become a laughing stock. This whole public consultation and fake co-create process has been a farce!”
“I am livid. We participated in a process that was prejudicial to begin with (by excluded many local voices), and now we’re stuck with something that didn’t need replacing. This new wooden thing looks clunky, over structured, and pigeons can easily perch underneath it – this will cause further issues. The council could have easily just renovated the old canopies, kept the structure, updated the wood panels, replaced the lighting wells, painted it properly and saved money. Instead they spent months disrupting market trade, blew £1million – and now this? We’ve been kicked in the teeth”, says local shopper of 30 years. “It’s a disgrace on all fronts.”
PHOTO (above): Previous canopies allowed natural lighting to enter under the canopies.
PHOTO above: “All that glitters is not gold”. The new wood and tin “shack” does not allow natural light to penetrate underneath.
Private contractors go bust
In amongst all of the delays, we were told that the private consultants William Floyd Maclean (appointed by Conway) who built the timber “shack” have gone bust. They left the job early, and this caused further delays for the traders and disrupted our local shopping patterns. In every other professional sector we have due diligence – where is it inside of Newham Council and Queen’s Market?
IMAGE (above): Development timeline from Newham Council made promises that did not deliver. The full works appear to have taken over 2 years longer. Normally, this level of delay for such a scale of project would be considered unacceptable. We did not see any of Executives on high wages fired, did you? [Source: Queens Market Overview Briefing Paper, page 7]
If the Council’s co-creation website is anything to go by, delays appear to be throughout. The co-creation process cost Newham £3.1million of public funds, with the total of £7.3million coming through the Mayor of London and Greater London Assembly’s office via a “Good Growth” fund topped up by Newham Council, but there’s nothing “good” about it! “The information on the co-create website does not look up to date, so it is false information and should be taken down”, says one local trying to navigate the website.
PHOTO (above): What’s the point of spending £millions when in practice it’s not worked well? Pigeon feathers litter the new netting, so no different from before. Traders and shoppers ask, has general maintenance improved? We don’t think so.
Many locals see nothing good about paying private consultants from outside of the borough, while local food rates are hiked through increase in market rates to pay the likes of One Source, a corporate wing of Newham Council.
Newham is claiming it’s on the brink of bankruptcy after finding a £157million deficit in its accounts
Well, we can see that it’s been going to these overpaid officers, and these fancy projects that promises mountains and delivers molehills, whilst lining the pockets of consultants from outside of the borough.
“Significant value for money weaknesses” at Newham Council
After all of this, the UK Government has stepped in and is now monitoring Newham Council over concerns at how ‘broke’ town hall is run – read article below (9 May 2025, Evening Standard article):
So, Newham Council has also fallen short of its Best Value Duty. That’s the duty to the People of Newham – that means they are failing you and me!
Statement from the UK Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
“…significant issues need addressing at pace [by Newham Council] to avoid future failure… The councils are expected to continue driving their own recovery and are requested to engage with the department for assurance of improvement. The notices will be in place for 12 months, after which progress will be reviewed.”
Read more here:
https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-statements/detail/2025-05-08/hcws620
You get best value at Queen’s Market
PHOTO (above): fresh produce at Queen’s Market. The Council’s corporate wing called One Source have put market rent prices up, with the cost falling on hard-working local families during a cost-of-living crisis.
Sadly, Newham Council is scheming behind the scenes to demolish Queen’s Market, that’s still under threat from privatisation and luxury flats that locals cannot afford.
PHOTO (above): At the end of April, FoQM members met with a Newham Council Senior Development Manager from “Regeneration and Housing Delivery” and another development manager. We had to remind them that it’s the markets that’s the priority here, not luxury flats. When asked if they knew about the well overdue Newham Markets Strategy, they looked none the wiser.
The evidence of the last few years shows that Newham Council has many other plans to take the market from under us, and was holding many consultations that did not included local people. The UK planning system continues to prioritise the needs of private developers, holding meeting and lobbying behind closed doors, while using tax payers funds.
Friends of Queen’s Market and others have recently piled on the pressure to safeguard the market and signed a letter to the directly-elected Mayor Rokhsana Fiaz – read extracts below:
“… We ask you to drop the ‘two options’ for Queens Market (currently under assessment) Both envisage provision of luxury housing on the site which will inevitably entail demolition of existing market structures like the shops round the market, the kiosks in the market, and /or the ‘compound’ (that’s the structure in Rochester Avenue where traders park store their vital bulk purchases)
We believe that the market does not need redevelopment: Any shortcomings can be addressed by proper maintenance, an improved management regime and the democratic delivery of the improved flooring and lighting for which the Council has already received the money.”
IMAGE (above): The devil in in the detail. The two options remain on the cards for Newham Council, the Mayor and public officers. Under the word “modernise” what they really mean is to demolish and destroy the current historic Queen’s Market, making £millions for wealthy others outside of the borough, while destroying the food source and community space for thousands of local families.
IMAGE (above): “All that glitters is not gold”: a well-known proverb that means not everything that looks attractive or valuable is actually so. It warns against being fooled by appearances and suggests that true worth should be evaluated beyond superficial qualities, so any hollow promises made by the likes of Newham Council’s private consultants must be scrutinised at all levels.
PHOTO (above): no amount of multi-colour paint is going to cover up the broken windows. Don’t be fooled by Newham Council’s cheap decorations. Friends of Queen’s Market are here to ensure the market stays in the community’s hands.
Incase you missed it, Newham’s directly-elected Mayor Rokhsana Fiaz recently took her own Council to court and got a payout on grounds of “race and sex discrimination”. Read more here: https://www.localgovernmentlawyer.co.uk/employment/395-employment-news/59525-london-borough-and-elected-mayor-agree-settlement-of-discrimination-claim
Something is increasingly awry at Newham Council… have you got the bottom of it?
To promote and preserve a thriving publicly-owned historic street market 