EVERY time I passed through Greenwich Market recently, I found myself sadly thinking: “Just four months before this is all gone.” The relief now that planning permission has been refused, and the threat lifted, is immense. But what happens next?

The day after the council threw out Greenwich Hospital’s plans, its director, Martin Sands, sent round a letter to all the market traders saying how “very disappointed” he was and thanking “many traders and retailers in the market… who so publicly gave us their support.” This sentence was ironically underlined by the shopkeeper who passed me the note. Let me say that in all these months I have only ever found one market trader who was wholly happy with the proposals.

The Hospital now has six months to lodge an appeal, which would probably be heard by the Planning Inspectorate in Bristol. The appeal would be decided on whether the council had acted in accordance with its own planning policy, the Unitary Development Plan (UDP), and national planning policy guidance (PPG). However, the council’s condemnation of the proposals was so comprehensive and scathing and the scheme breached so many policies of the UDP and PPG that the odds must be against a successful appeal.

The council’s official decision notice, published a few days after the planning meeting, says the scheme breaks ten UDP policies and two items of PPG. It adds that the proposed development:

– has “an unbalanced and detrimental relationship with the established urban fabric of the area;”

– is “visually obtrusive…to the detriment of the adjacent Grade II listed buildings;”

– is “out of keeping with its historic surroundings;”

– “fails to preserve or enhance the character and appearance of the West Greenwich Conservation Area and has an adverse effect on the Maritime Greenwich World Heritage site in which it is located;”

– would cause “the overdevelopment of the site and…adversely affect the existing patterns of development;”

– “is considered to lead to ‘town cramming’;”

– “fails to safeguard the integrity of adjoining properties;”

– shows “a low quality of design for the covered roof and a poor environment;”

– would cause “an increased sense of enclosure and loss of outlook detrimental to the residential amenities presently enjoyed by the adjoining residential properties;”

– would “impact on the free flow of traffic;” and

– would “result in additional congestion and obstruction on the local highway to the detriment of pedestrian and highway safety.”

That is some smackdown, folks. They found some arguments that even I didn’t think of!

What about option 2, making some revisions to the existing Hopkins blueprint and coming back in a few months? This seems unlikely to find favour, either: from the tone of its decision, the council will accept nothing less than major changes – which the Hospital probably can’t afford to make. The Hospital’s spokesman, David McFarlane, is surprisingly frank when I call him: “Proposing a smaller scheme will affect the viability and the viability was always incredibly tight,” he said.

When (in 2006) the Hospital first tried to sneak through the Hopkins scheme, in secret, it caused an outcry and forced a retreat. But instead of changing the scheme in any significant way, they just changed the PR strategy, embarking on their effort to win over “key stakeholders” with a lot of meetings and a few relatively minor changes to the design.

Now that strategy has completely failed. Those “key stakeholders,” such as Nick Raynsford MP and the Greenwich Society, have been revealed as not, in fact, “key” at all – but as totally irrelevant. The Hospital has spent – wasted – vast amounts of money printing glossy leaflets, buttering up local worthies and buying out leases. But it is now clear that the only “stakeholders” who matter are the public, the market traders and the council, and it is these the Hospital must satisfy.

With the Hospital’s whole work of the last three years in ruins, now is the time for a radical rethink. It is time for Greenwich Hospital to recognise that the Hopkins blueprint is dead and that no amount of cosmetic tinkering can bring it back to life.

After they have accepted this, there are two possible courses the Hospital could take. The first is to work with the community and the market traders – the real community and all the market traders, that is, rather than the ersatz “consultation” apparatus of self-appointed amenity groups and hand-picked trader representatives – to come up with a new design that all are happy with. This new blueprint should preserve the market’s heritage ambience, support its varied tenant mix and respect its human scale. It should not be sweeping, “iconic,” or grandiose.

The second option, which might well also be the economically sensible choice, is simply to refresh the existing fabric. Perhaps clean the roof; perhaps do something about the tackiness of the central streets, which to my mind are a far more pressing problem than the market. But for the market itself, modest change is all that’s needed. And if the Hospital doesn’t accept that, maybe it’s time to think about changing the Hospital.

Tonight, at 6.30pm, at Woolwich Town Hall, Wellington Street, the council’s planning board will consider the application to demolish Greenwich Market.  So a few days ago, a group of us decided to test the claims by Greenwich Hospital, the owners of the Market, that there is “widespread support” for their plan.

We set up our home-made banner and clipboards in the centre of town. In just five hours – three hours on Sunday and two on Monday – 806 people signed formal objection letters to the Hospital’s planning application.

Including others who wrote individual letters, the total number of objections now stands at around 880 – nearly three times the number of responses received by the Hospital to its own public consultation. More than 80 per cent of our objectors were from the borough of Greenwich or from within a few miles’ radius. It is clear that had we done it for a longer period, we could have amassed tens of thousands of names.

We showed people pictures of the proposal, and the text (written by the developers themselves) describing it, and were taken aback by the strength of feeling, verging in some cases on real anger. People were literally queuing up to sign.

There seems to be enormous concern, far greater than I suspected, among local people about “what is happening to Greenwich,” with the closure of the Village Market, the horse events in the Park, and now the Market redevelopment set to cause years of disruption and permanent damage to a unique and cherished place.

We were struck, too, by the large numbers of locals who didn’t really know about what was planned – who refused to believe, until we showed them the plans, that the market was actually going to be demolished and replaced with a modern market.

It is even more clear to me now than it was before that the development has no public support at all. The Hospital has managed to co-opt various local worthies – such as the Greenwich Society and Nick Raynsford MP – but this turns out to be no more than a symptom of how our representatives have lost touch with the people they’re supposed to represent.

Tonight, we objectors will have – ahem – five minutes to make our case (though this can be extended at the chair of the meeting’s discretion.) It is not even clear whether the 800-odd letters signed over the weekend will be formally notified to the meeting – the consultation period is officially closed – but we decided to send round copies of some of them to councillors, just so they could see what the public thought for themselves.

Will councillors take any notice? In a rational world, they should – because the application (and its cousin to put the temporary market on the Old Royal Naval College site) contravenes their own policy, the Unitary Development Plan, in at least five separate respects. However, the officers have recommended acceptance – and Greenwich councillors usually do what their officers tell them.

Greenwich councillors do not have a good record of listening to their voters or obeying their own declared planning policy – they recently approved a very unpopular high-density housing development in King’s Highway, Plumstead, despite its being in breach of 22 policies of the UDP.

I think all this says something important about how our democracy here in Greenwich is failing – partly because one party has a vast majority on the council, and feels secure to do whatever it wants; but more, I think, because of our serious lack of functioning civic institutions.

We no longer have a real conservation body – the Greenwich Society has turned itself into a PR organ for the Market developers and the people who want to tear up Greenwich Park. We don’t have particularly strong local media. Though the Mercury tries hard, it is based outside the borough and does not compare to local newspapers in some other parts of the capital. Hence the lack of information that we found among many.

Over the market, there is still time. Even if the redevelopment gets the nod tonight, the planning process is not concluded. But I think that had anything as bad as the market scheme been proposed in an area where there was a decent local paper and a strong civic group it would already have been defeated by now.

The Commission on Architecture and the Built Environment calls it “alien” and “awkward.” The Victorian Society says it will be “damaging.” The Environment Agency describes it as an “unacceptable risk to the environment.” The leader of the opposition on Greenwich Council calls it “aesthetic vandalism.” I said it would turn an historic market into a “modern shopping precinct with market stalls attached.”

But you guessed it – that doughty guardian of our town, Greenwich Council’s planning department, thinks the proposal to rip up Greenwich Market is absolutely fine.

In one week’s time, councillors on the planning board will decide whether to approve the demolition scheme. Late last week, the council planning officers’ recommendation to the committee was published. It is sure to have considerable influence on what the councillors themselves decide. And it gives the developers everything they want, recommending approval of the demolition with no significant conditions.

The site, say the officers, is “an excellent location” for the proposed 104-room luxury hotel. No, the hotel’s not too big. No, it won’t overshadow everything else, or dominate the listed buildings around it – or at least if it does, that will simply “add to the character of the West Greenwich Conservation Area.” No, the hotel won’t cause more traffic – why, all the guests will come by public transport!

The officers grudgingly admit that the current, locally-listed market roof “has some relevance to local identity” and that the columns are “quite attractive.” They concede that their own planning policy, the Unitary Development Plan (UDP), is that “applications for the demolition of locally listed buildings will be discouraged.” They admit that this is a “valid perspective in this situation.” But they’re approving its demolition anyway.

That new plastic roof which replaces it? Well, it’s lovely – or in the planning department’s words, it gives “significant scope for improvement to the character and appearance of the market space” and is an “appropriate addition in this heritage context.” This is perhaps the planners’ most blatant denial of reality. The “character” and “context” of a World Heritage site cannot be improved by replacing it with something copied from Stratford Bus Station.

The UDP policy about locally-listed buildings isn’t the only one of their own policies that councillors are recommended to ignore. UDP policy TC7 states: “The Council will protect and enhance the site and setting of the Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site…. Development within it should preserve and enhance its essential and unique character and appearance.” Indisputably, the new scheme will not do this.

Policy TC8 states that any new development anywhere in the town centre must “demonstrate the highest standards in design, landscaping, detailing, and finishing.” Not here, they mustn’t.

Policy TC12 says that the Council “will…seek to reduce the effects of through traffic on Greenwich town centre.”

Policy M40 states that “developments generating/ attracting coach traffic will need to make provision for dropping off and picking up, coach manoeuvring on site.” This is clearly not the case with the proposed hotel.

Seventy-five individual letters about the development were received from residents. Of those, 74 were against. I have asked dozens of people what they think about this proposal – and I have been able to find only three people who support it. Greenwich Hospital may have sewn up the “community representatives,” whether elected – like Nick Raynsford MP – or self-appointed, like the Greenwich Society. But over the Market it is clear, and perhaps to the developers’ surprise, that these supposed representatives in fact represent nobody.

The action now moves to another set of community representatives. Will the councillors on the planning board go along with their officers? Or, with a local election due in nine months, will they show any kind of awareness of the feeling among their voters? If they choose to ignore the views of the public, then I think we can anticipate a political backlash.

Whatever happens, next week is not the end of the road. Either the opposition – or the developers – can challenge a decision that goes against them, with the Mayor and possibly the Government.