One Source, a corporate wing of Newham Council that collects rents at Queen’s Market, make some outlandish claims on their website… have you dug deeper to see who runs One Source, how much their executives get paid and how they operate?

One Source claim “As a not-for-profit, we think like you, work like you – and share your passion for the community” – Who are they ‘not-for-profit’ for exactly? Why have One Source continued to put the rents up at Queen’s Market and threaten local livelihoods? Traders tell us the One Source charges them “whatever the last person agreed to pay” and operate “outrageous” practices. And the council says it’s nothing to do with them.

DODGY OVERCHARGE BY ONE SOURCE… READ ALL ABOUT IT HERE: https://www.romfordrecorder.co.uk/news/local-council/onesource-overcharged-council-users-total-of-5m-8546004

“The mistake was missed by multiple staff members at OneSource, which provides back-office services at both Havering and Newham Council, and was only spotted ten days later when the payments were processed. 

One woman, Patricia Clark, told the Recorder at the time that the council requested £3,952 from her account, rather than the usual £39.52″

In late August 2022 Newham Council with its private consultants put in a planning application for secluded and apparently “affordable” workspaces on a corner of the car park above the market’s compound (storage area). The Council say “affordable” when it suits them – but meanwhile they have raised market rents and their rent collectors continue to threaten traders!

The workspace block is part of the Good Growth £5.3 million grant, but nobody asked for it in consultations and the council has presented no empirical evidence to show that this kind of workspace is needed here. FoQM don’t think the car park structure can handle the huge extra weight of the additional workspace – and if it cracks, the market traders’ will lose their storage compound underneath.

The building is designed to be “meanwhile use” – so it could be taken down again. This goes against all principles of Good Growth. And these plans directly threaten Queen’s Market !

You can view our objections below (scrolling pdf) and further below:

Content of our letter to the planning department:

To Jane Custance, Director of Planning and Development Emily Thorne, Planner at London Borough of Newham Sent by email to: Development.control@newham.gov.uk, duty.officer@newham.gov.uk and emily.thorne@newham.gov.uk Date sent: 25/08/2022

Objection to planning application number: 22/01752/FUL Application: Car Park, Queen’s Market, London, Newham

We would like to make an objection to the above planning application on the grounds listed below. We want Newham’s planning department to reject the proposal. We want this objection to be uploaded on the online portal alongside the application. We would like to make representation on the day of the application hearing. We object to the proposals on the following grounds:

1. Removal of car park amenity The proposal seeks to remove a car park amenity that is crucial to the shoppers that come to Queen’s Market and to Green Street to shop. This car park is needed as an overflow space from the main car park and this has not be considered in the proposal.

2. Negative effects on Queen’s Market and retail strategy The proposal does not take into account the need of the shoppers visiting the local area who need to bulk buy in their cars for their families. This is part of the shopping pattern of the area and goes agains the retail strategy for the area.

3. No local need for office spaces There is plenty of office space locally and in Newham. Stratford, a central business district is just 15 minutes bus ride away. The proposed offices are not needed in this area and can be absorbed into the high street Green Street where many offices already exist. We do not think offices next to family homes is appropriate.

4. Inadequate consultation Newham Council’s planning department and Architecture00 have failed to consult local people properly throughout this process. Initial consultations took place through Newham Co-create website despite Newham Council officers knowing that most people in Newham and the local area cannot and do not log in nor comment online. Local people say that the consultation process has been extremely complicated and their real views have been ignored. Local people only had around 20 days since the application was submitted to comment, and many local stakeholders were not notified.

5. Overlooking family homes and loss of privacy The heights of the building means that the proposed new tenants can overlook local homes and local people will lose their privacy especially on the neighbouring properties at Queens Square, 1, 8 to 14 Crown Mews, 1 to 120 Hamara Ghar, 1 to 6 & 7 to 12 Lilac Court, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9 & 11 Waghorn Road and 41, 43, 45 & 47 Rochester Avenue.

6. Loss of daylight and sunlight We are very concerned about the loss of daylight coming through the windows of the neighbouring properties at Queens Square, 1, 8 to 14 Crown Mews,1 to 120 Hamara Ghar, 1 to 6 & 7 to 12 Lilac Court, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9 & 11 Waghorn Road and 41, 43, 45 & 47 Rochester Avenue.

7. Poor design We do not think that the quality of materials used is longterm and shows the disregard and waste of money from the Good Growth fund that is needed to improve Queen’s Market. The design is ill-informed and does not understand how successful places work. It will create a ‘lock up’ shop environment with little permeability or flow of people and instead create a defensive wall of buildings.

8. Does not meet Green credentials nor meets environmental performance The application admits that there is a great risk of overheating and thus a fire risk. The Design & Access statement (page 33) states: “Overheating has been identified as a key risk, due to the exposed position and limited structural capability of the existing podium, as such solar gains through the fabric and glazing will have to be minimised, and high thermal mass internal linings will be necessary”. This goes against Newham’s declaration of a Climate Emergency and instead adds to global warming. The Design & Access statement (page 35) states: “Buildings that overheat cause significant discomfort and stress to the occupants and can ultimately lead to litigation and costly mitigation measures for the owners/developers”

9. Structural concerns We do not think that the existing podium structure can hold the extra weight of buildings and offices and ruins the integrity of the 1960s mock-brutalist style of Queen’s Market and it’s adjoining car park areas.

10. Building noise and disturbance If this planning application goes ahead the noise and disruption would mean that Queen’s Market will be impacted detrimentally. Street markets are fragile ecosystems and Architecture00 have failed to show any understanding of why and how Queen’s Market works. We do not think the proposed development is fit for purpose.

Yours sincerely,

On behalf of Friends of Queen’s Market

Email: friendsofqueensmarket@yahoo.co.uk 

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Here’s another objection letter regarding the plans for the workspaces:

Re Planning application 22/01752/FUL Workspace on top of the Compound at Queen’s Market.

I object to the principle of this planning application due to its lack of long-term benefit.

I feel the proposal does not conform with the following policies:
NPPF 

Chapter 2. Achieving sustainable development

Chapter 6. Building a strong, competitive economy

London Plan

GG1 Building strong and inclusive communities

GG5 Growing a good economy

Policy E2 Providing suitable business space

Newham Local Plan

SP1 Borough-wide place-making

J3 Skills and Access to Employment 

It does not conform for these reasons:

1) The proposal is designed as “meanwhile use”. This means any benefits gained will disappear after a (an unknown) period of time. Yet there is no mention of how, or if at all, these spaces would be re-located if the building was dismantled, or how that employment would be retained. A business takes time to grow and establish itself, yet the application is written as if viable businesses will be conjured up by magic for a limited period of time.

2) Building a building of any kind simply to dismantle it is not what is intended by the circular economy.

3) The Planning Statement claims that there is a ‘holistic’ vision (para 1.2) between the four Good Growth projects, but this is far from the case. What’s missing is the link with the economy and employment offered by Queen’s Market and a recognition of potential physical and strategic business connections with the Market. Instead the building comes across as a separate entity operating independently of the Market. For example, genuine links could be made with traders so that things made in the workspaces are sold in the Market. It’s not clear that the proposed spaces could serve as small manufacturing spaces. 
Currently, the Market’s traders are suffering from pressure of very high rent demands which are putting business, employment and livelihoods at risk. There is no justification for this when compared with the benefits of affordable space and the provision of employment offered by this planning application. The Council will be giving with one hand, while taking away with the other.

It is claimed that the GLA asks for the following outputs from the wider scheme:
– New jobs being created, and existing jobs being safeguarded: 20
– Number of businesses receiving support: 30
– Number of people progressing into work: 30

The question is whether these figures include
– the jobs lost from rent rises and potential loss of businesses in the Market
– the lack of provision of new stall pitches, when we know there is a waiting list. 

4) Consultation has been very limited and in practice not nearly as comprehensive as the application suggests. From the start, workspace was pre-decided as a Good Growth project. Following that, very limited involvement of traders and shoppers appears to have taken place, to the extent that there is little knowledge of this planning application. The actual impact of engagement is shown in the Design and Access Statement: Bi-monthly engagement workshops with a Stakeholder Working Group made up of local SME’s, residents, market trader representatives and institutional representatives. This working group has provided local insights and guidance on how / who to engage. This suggests that engagement is a lot about asking people to build up the nunbers of people consulted. 

Traders who use the Compound rely on it for their businesses, but it is unclear whether these traders are aware and fully involved in this plan, which they need to be for the project to be successful.

5) With the proposed engineering of the building above the Compound it is by no means clear that it poses no threat to the structure of the Compound. Should there be a problem and structural harm is done to the Compound, there needs to be a mitigation strategy for the re-provision of this ground floor space, which is integral to the successful operation of Queen’s Market. Otherwise, this temporary, Meanwhile project poses a direct threat to Queen’s Market. 

Were you left out of Council’s consultation process?

On 1st August, FoQM supporters gave a presentation to Council officers and the private consultants who are doing the ‘Capacity and Viability Study’ into possible future plans. We said: how can they do that study properly if they don’t really understand the market? They seem to view it only as a “retail space” and not the social, cultural and community space that Queen’s Market is.

We told them that during the Covid-19 lockdown there were at least twelve different public consultations, either on the future of Queen’s Market or consultations that impacted Queen’s Market in some way (see page 5 of presentation below) – how does Newham Council expect local people to navigate their constantly changing questions, ‘pie in the sky’ ideas and their wobbly parameters?

CLICK HERE TO SEE OUR PRESENTATION to council officers and consultants

FoQM noticed that the residents of the ward Plaistow North, where Queen’s Market resides, were being left out (see page 6 of presentation above), yet these family homes rely heavily on Queen’s Market as their main food source.

We don’t know if the Council and their consultants have the desire to understand Queen’s Market better. When their report comes out, sometime before the end of the year, will know more on this …….

Have you thought about investigating Newham Council’s ‘pie in the sky’ ideas and hidden agendas and their impacts on hard-working families living in Newham?

Many shoppers and traders at Queen’s Market do not know that the future of the market is under threat. Maybe that’s because there have been two sets of ‘consultations’ on the market future over the last two years. Except that most Newham people were not consulted.

Consultation number one was the Good Growth project with a grant of £5.3 million promising goodies for the market, new floor, new lighting and toilets partly paid for by the GLA. Who can object to that? (The Council have also decided on other uses for most of the money, which nobody had a say about.)

Then, another consultation started around the same time, about the long-term future of the market called the Capacity and Viability Study. For this, there are currently two choices. Option A envisages adding a health centre, library, neighbourhood centre on ground floor and/or roof. Option B adds a youth centre, adult education centre and housing. 

There was no question of the public being asked to choose between these two options. And the Council handpicked so-called ‘stakeholders’ to consult, and carefully avoided picking Friends of Queen’s Market nominees. A brief has been passed to the consultants paid to carry out the study. Their report is due to be published in August and go straight to the Cabinet to decide in October some time. [update: this hasn’t happened yet]

The Council keeps saying ‘there will always be a market’? But what do these consultations say about their real agenda? And what do we need to do? Read on.

We say you can’t have extra building on the market ground floor without pulling down shops or closing the stalls and shops we value. We suspect that the real agenda is to build expensive luxury housing on the site. There will be talk of housing for people on the housing list but hey – remember the 842 new homes built on the former West Ham ground? There are only 39 at social rent levels!

But all this consultation on the market’s future has been done in a confusing way. First people were asked to choose via the website between five options for the market, one was ‘maintain only’ i.e the Council does all the maintenance work that you would expect of a good landlord but no alteration to existing stalls, shops, kiosks. Friends of Queen’s Market created a paper version of the survey and got responses from people in and around the market don’t do computers. The results found an overwhelming preference for ‘maintenance only’. 

More confusion! In July 2021 the Council’s report which summarised the online consultation findings concluded that there was ‘no overall preference’ for any of the options. This despite accepting our paper survey which clearly showed a preference. The Council then promised that there would be ‘modelling’ of the five options. But – then they changed to the two options above and they even changed the name of the study group looking into the long-term future of the market (from ‘Capacity and Viability’ to ‘Investment strategy’)

Meanwhile whatever happened to the Good Growth goodies – toilet floor and lighting? Well the Council spent two years form January 2020 to December 2021 consulting on this. This was being done at the same time as the other consultation on the ‘options’ so many people who don’t have the time to follow every twist and turn of Council policy got thoroughly confused.

Now suddenly the council is appointing contractors to do the building work to deliver these goodies. Without a word of consultation to traders or shoppers about how the building works will proceed. 

What is going on? Whatever happened to transparency? Friends of Queen’s Market are demanding that we are all told: when will these works start/ What materials will be used for flooring and lighting? Will there be a toilet attendant and free toilets or will the toilets be expensive and smelly and neglected like the existing toilets? Will our beloved market be turned into a building site? For how long? Will shops and stalls be closed?

WATCH THIS SPACE!  SUPPORT FRIENDS OF QUEEN’S MARKET! SIGN OUR LATEST PETITION!

Current FoQM petition: https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/respect-and-protect-queen-s-market

Above: An extract from a campaigner’s leaflet that is critical of JA Projects, the same consultants used by Newham Council for Queen’s Market. OnRedchurch, a dodgy developer-friendly outfit has damaged the Redchurch Street area of East London with extreme gentrification, so much so that long-standing local businesses were pushed out through overnight rent hikes… an indication of what might happen in Newham. These consultants couldn’t care less!

Queen’s Market shopkeepers turned to the public for support in their long-running fight with Newham Council.

Aided by Friends of Queen’s Market shoppers they gave out hundreds of leaflets explaining their plight.

‘Some of the shopkeepers have dodgy leases which mean they don’t get full protection from the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954. When their leases end the Council charges whatever it likes, in some cases doubling the rent. This has a knock-on effect on all Queen’s Market traders when their rents are reviewed’. 

 ‘For two years we’ve been asking the Council to do the right thing and issue the same lease to all traders with full 1954 Act rights. In March the Mayor’s office sent a very friendly email promising that once a response was finalised they would be in contact. Since then we got auto-acknowledgements – but no response!’ stated Pauline Rowe of Friends of Queen’s Market.

Shopper activist Andrew Peel added ‘Many shops have received impossible rent demands: together they already pay the Council £600,000k per year: none of it is ring-fenced for the market and the roof still leaks!’

John shopping at B & M Food centre said ‘The Council take our money; they give it back during Covid now they take it for rent: you can’t win!’

Mr Arifi owner of Khyber Meats explained his predicament ‘My lease has expired: I have one of the dodgy leases so I have no automatic right to lease renewal. My solicitor never explained this when I took out the lease ten years ago. I am worried sick. If they put a thirty per cent rent increase on me I’ll have to close and my workers will lose their jobs.’

Mrs Begum of Fish Bazaar said ‘Shopkeepers pay twelve thousand pounds for a tiny kiosk: rents here are way too high already: how can they demand more?’

Haberdashery trader Ashok Kaul said ‘I am one of the traders with an unprotected lease and I have been warned that I could face a hundred per cent rent increase when it expires next year. How can any trader in our position plan for the future? We have been told that the Council wants to support its small shopkeepers – let’s at least have a real answer to our requests for lease security.’

Sasha Laurel, chair of Friends of Queen’s Market commented on the Saturday event ‘All the shoppers we met supported our call for trader justice. We did hope to see the Mayor when she visited the market and remind her of the shopkeepers’ plight. But she arrived after we had all gone back to shops and homes. A pity but we won’t give up.’

Last word to shopper and community worker Vijaya Patel  ’We don’t want our shops priced out of Queen’s Market –people need them. Let’s see some of the Council’s promised support for small businesses.’

Now that funds have trickled down to the market via the Good Growth fund for improvements, the Council and their partners and consultants want to get their ‘greedy’ mitts on the dosh.

Fancy architects and engagement people are being shipped in from outside of the borough and they have more say than local people who rely on Queen’s Market as a lifeline. Below is a section of a stakeholder mapping chart where you can read the names of many organisations that are not near Queen’s Market but suddenly have more say in what happens, while locals are not allowed on the working groups due to arbitrary rules. We think this is a ploy by the Council and its consultants to undermine the local people’s voices that clearly want to “save Queen’s Market” and “keep it in public hands”.

We ask: do locals in Upton Park get a say in what happens in Stratford’s former Olympics site?

We know that Newham’s “preferred” private developers are keen to get their mitts on the market land but in their haste to make bucks and hand over every local asset to the ‘filthy rich’ developers they have have put lives in danger – what a shame.

FoQM bumped into local campaigners who have moved into homes on the new Boleyn Grounds development called Upton Gardens built by Barratt Homes who claim to build “Homes of the Highest Quality”, but sadly the residents are experiencing cladding issues under the fake brick slip façade that they say put their lives in danger and out of pocket.

Since the Grenfell disaster that saw the corporate murder of at least 72 people due to the installation of cheap cladding, we wanted to encourage people to watch ‘Value Engineering: scenes from the Grenfell enquiry’, a play in the style of verbatim that shows how systematic neglect can cost human lives. The scenes from the play look only too familiar considering how responsibility has been outsourced by local Councils across the country. Below is more information about the play:

In 2019 Newham applied for a £2 million ‘Good Growth’ grant from the Mayor of London, which they would match fund with £1.3 million. By the summer of 2020 a decision was made that a total of £5.3 million would be spent on the Good Growth Programme: £2.15 million from Newham and now with £3.2 million from the Mayor of London.

A small public consultation took place in January 2020. People who took part were asked to chose their priorities for the funds in each category but were heavily steered by the Council’s regeneration officers who had already decided that only only one quarter of this money would be spent on fixing the structure of the market, which is in need of attention. The remaining three quarters of the money is to be spent on “affordable workspace” for artists on top of the car park; the public space around Queen’s Square; and a “wellbeing centre”.  We’ve been saying for years that affordable spaces are needed inside the market’s shops, where rents have been rising. And they call this process “co-design”!

The spending on the market itself will be restricted to the floor, the lighting and the much-needed toilets. Why is the roof left out of this enormous budget? Does it really cost £1 million to plant trees and put benches in Hamara Ghar square? Is the “Queen’s Market Good Growth Programme” really about improving Queen’s market for the long term?

In the small print of this consultation the Council says,

“Alongside this investment, the Council will be assessing the long-term opportunities for the site which will include a new covered market with improved traders facilities, additional housing, health centre, affordable workspace and retail”

In fact, three of the options for development would demolish the market and/or the Hamara Ghar sheltered housing, meaning that the £millions from the ‘Good Growth’ grant would be wasted.

Local peoples’ encounters with Newham’s Co-create website has been less than warm, with the vast majority of Queen’s Market users preferring to keep well away from it.

What we’ve found so far from the Newham Co-create website:

• There is no safeguarding against people making rude comments about important community assets.
• The Council and their chosen consultants are not transparent on how the data they collect will feed into the entire consultation process.
• There are people who have worked for, are employees of, friends of or associated with Newham Council, so clearly the process is not an accurate reflection of real users of the market.
• There’s lots of confusion between the different working groups eg. Good Growth, Capacity and Viability, Green Street and Hamara Ghar. We feel this is a “cluster of attacks” on our community.
• There are no standard procedures, for example when one person left a working group they were not allowed onto another easily. Meanwhile we’ve heard of at least 2 Council’s “yes” people have been allowed onto multiple working groups.
• The process of who is chosen and who is left out is not clear – many market users feel aggrieved that they cannot have a say in the future of their local area because of rules like distance from the market, number of shoppers allowed or BAME women… market users from outside of the borough are not considered adequately either.
• The vast majority of local people are being digitally excluded simply for not being able to access online services. This process excludes many disabled, elderly and hard of hearing or less literate.
• Our communities have lots of other priorities like bringing up and feeding families, yet the community is seen as a ‘free’ resource while private consultants get paid from the public pocket. We think this is unethical.
• Time lines and events lists are unclear and keep changing on the Newham Co-create website.
• Too complicated – many local people have said that the language used is jargon and hard to understand, thus misleading.

Tell us your experience: one of the FoQM volunteers is interested in tracking the Council’s consultation process and how Newham’s diverse communities encounter it. Email friendsofqueensmarket@yahoo.co.uk to let them know about your experience of Newham Co-create so far.

LINK to Newham Co-create: https://newhamco-create.co.uk/

Despite the ‘cluster of attacks’ from the Council’s planning department while the Good Growth funds are being swallowed up by private consultants, the Council have simultaneously started another group to look at partial or full-scale regeneration and redevelopment of Queen’s Market. FoQM are not happy that all these important things are taking place at once as it confuses people, and where the process has been less than transparent and privatisation of public land is likely to be considered.

The Council’s co-create website is so complicated and unclear that it’s not allowed a number of FoQM locals to get on board. Instead the same old “yes” people fill these spaces to say negative things about the market so to ‘rubber stamp’ regeneration.

We think that Newham Council’s Co-create website not only digitally excludes huge sections of our community for whom Queen’s Market is a lifeline, but the Council and their “friendly” consultants are complicit in not wanting to hear the true views of the diverse market users.

Do you know whether your voice will be heard in the Council’s Capacity and Viability study?

Link to the Capacity & Viability regeneration project: https://www.newham.gov.uk/regeneration-1/regeneration-project-green-street/3