The leader of Greenwich Council said he doesn’t “wake up and dream of selling car parks” but the assets must be sold to keep the council’s services going.
Greenwich Council announced it had put three car parks—one near Plumstead High Street, another near Blackheath Standard and the final one near Charlton Village—up for public auction on November 25 as all three were underutilised and their sale would generate “essential revenue”.
The land has been collectively listed at a price of just over £1.1m and all three will go under the hammer at midday on December 11.
Upon the sale announcement, Greenwich’s Cabinet Member for Planning, Estate Renewal and Development cllr Majid Rahman said: “We can see from the parking income data that these car parks are poorly used.
“Keeping poorly performing car parks for the sake of it isn’t something we can continue to justify as a council when we need to make savings and increase revenue.”
He said that the sale of the car parks would go towards plugging the council’s predicted £45m budget gap.
The council also confirmed that all three sites would remain open until any sale was agreed.
Two separate petitions opposing the sale have been presented to the council and both were signed by over 200 residents.
A number of online petitions have also sprung up in opposition to the proposals and members of the public questioned councillors on the topic at a full council meeting on December 3.
Gary Dark asked cllr Rahman what engagement had been done with businesses in Charlton village and why the council had deemed the Charlton car park to be underused after recording its usage for a period of only three days.
Greenwich Council found the car park was used 71 times from September 13 to 15. The council also revealed that the Charlton site cost £2,794 a year to operate while only bringing in £1,904, meaning it was losing the authority £890 a year.
Cllr Rahman said he had spoken to Charlton business owners about what was impacting them on a day-to-day basis and had also observed that most shoppers in Charlton Village walked as they lived nearby.
He also said the three-day sample size was standard procedure and that the council purposefully chose three days over a weekend to record the car park at its busiest.
Maria Freeman claimed the businesses in Plumstead High Street were not engaged with before the sale was announced. She asked cllr Rahman to halt the sale until more engagement was carried out.
In response, Cllr Rahman said Plumstead businesses could reach out to the council if they needed support and he would be coordinating with ward councillors to have more discussions with those on the High Street.
He said: “The thing that is important here is not necessarily what happens to the car parks. Obviously that is a key aspect for residents, but overall what we want to do is support the businesses around the changing times of how people shop locally.
“A lot of business has gone online so what we want to do is attract people back to our high streets.”
This was met with groans from the public gallery, with some shouts of “rubbish” being heard as many felt removing car parks would only decrease footfall for these small shopping parades.
The Conservative leader of the opposition, cllr Matt Hartley, said the council had treated businesses near the car parks “abysmally” and criticised council leader Anthony Okereke for not meeting with business owners in 2025 despite numerous requests to do so.
Labour cllr Okereke retaliated by stating that cllr Hartley had engineered “Project Fear” among the businesses owners and that some of his cabinet members had met with business owners in Blackheath to discuss the issues they were facing, not just parking.
He also explained that he could not attend that visit as he had been on leave for personal reasons when it had occurred in September.
Cllr Okereke said: “We know the economy is in dire straits. We know that businesses need our support.
“We know that the cycle of the economy is affecting businesses and this council is doing everything we can do to support them and we have seen through the work we have done on business rates, supporting businesses and all of those other functions.
“Whilst he’s going down there, talking to businesses and creating Project Fear, I’ll be very clear with him.
“Project Fear started when his government put cuts to this council and has left this council in a deficit where we can’t close the budget to the point that his government said that we need to sell assets just so we can keep libraries open.
“The work we are doing to sell assets is no work that we want to do. It’s the work to make sure we keep feeding children in this borough, that we keep housing people.
“It’s the work to stop ourselves from going bankrupt, just like how other councils have gone bankrupt. Every single year we have to set a budget in this council to keep services going for residents.
“I don’t wake up and dream of selling car parks. Sadly, we have had to sell some of our assets just so we can keep our frontline services going.”
Cllr Hartley responded that it wasn’t Project Fear if the council then went and sold the car parks anyway, and also that cllr Okereke had the whole year to visit businesses, not just September.
