Wilton Road is the heavily congested little road
which leads to Abbey Wood station. Once a busy little shopping centre boasting a
newsagent, delicatessen, butcher, two grocers and a greengrocer, pharmacist, off-licence,
florist, beautician, launderette, dry cleaners, both ladies’
and gentlemen’s hairdressers, two cab offices, two betting shops, two pubs, a
café, ironmonger and electrical appliance retailer. When Crossrail (Elizabeth line)
was on the horizon Bexley Council, for the first time ever, noticed that Wilton
Road existed and asked the shopkeepers to set up a Trader’s Association to provide
a contact point for Council Officers.
For reasons that don’t really matter I was appointed their Secretary and
arranged all their monthly meetings. I still have all the Minutes and Audio
recordings from February 2016 to February 2020. When the Council got wind of who
was Secretary the Association was told to find a new one but after a week or two
of deliberations the Council (it was more Greenwich than Bexley) was told to get stuffed.
I was alone in attending every single one of the meetings. I heard
Bexley Council Officers saying (literally) that the shop owners were sitting on
little goldmines with the extra footfall brought about by the new railway. The
shop owners were encouraged to invest in their businesses to take advantage of
their good fortune. One cab office took over its rival and spent an absolute fortune on a modern
computer booking system with a stack of servers in the back room. Peabody took
soundings on whether their Harrow Inn site should include an M&S or Tesco.
It all came to nothing.
A monthly market was short-lived and almost no one walks to Abbey Wood station. There is a
succession of train passengers delivered by car and the buses are all out of
service while using the road as a turning loop.
Peabody never did build on its Harrow Inn site (demolished 2009) and far from
becoming a gold mine the shopping centre has gone into decline. I have not spent
so much as a penny there since before Covid. It is all bad news and has shown
how bad Councils can be at strategic planning.
Recently, the Co-op store in McLeod Road has permanently closed leaving the area
seriously short of general grocers. One of those in Wilton Road has halved in
size and the other survives by catering for the high proportion of foreign born
residents. Greenwich Council has allowed
its side of the street (the borough
border runs down the middle) to deteriorate and anything that needs repairing
gets a cheap bodge job if they can be bothered to get off of their backsides at
all. Bexley Council does its best to deter shoppers with its regular CEO patrols.
Linda Williams who lives above her ladies’ hairdressing salon has gone down the
petition route. It may be an act of desperation; who takes any notice of
petitions? Certainly not Bexley Council which runs a scheme designed to allow them to be killed at will.
Anyway, if you agree with Linda you can sign at
https://www.change.org/p/need-of-grocery-shops-at-abbey-wood.
She gives her reasons there and It is simple enough to sign and will cost you nothing. Abbey Wooders should give Linda some support.
