Protect Our High Street - Stop The Street Stalls!

Labour-run Redbridge Council have announced plans for nine permanent new stalls in the centre of our village, from the station down the full length of the High Street.

These stalls would be open seven days a week, 365 days a year, blocking the pavement from the George and Dragon to the Tesco Extra. At a fraction of the cost of a shop, local businesses are worried about low-cost competition damaging our High Street and leading to empty shops which blight parts  Ilford town centre.

Our local Lib Dem team were out on the High Street last weekend talking to residents and businesses; not one person knew about these plans before they were given the go-ahead. 

Local Lib Dem Mark Gitsham said “Whatever the Labour-run Council’s claim, not a single person or business we have spoken to has any memory of being consulted on this, and would have said ‘no’ to these plans.”

He added: “We are demanding that Redbridge Council halts its plans and consults local residents and businesses properly. Only then should a decision be made, based on the outcome of a FULL consultation.”  

Redbridge Council claims that as well as an official consultation (methodology not described) it advertised the list of approved sites on three occasions in 2025 in the Yellow Advertiser. The Advertiser ceased to be delivered in Wanstead more than 20 years ago and went exclusively on-line from 2016. We would like to ask why the Council didn’t make use of its own noticeboards in the High Street where residents could actually have seen these proposals? 

Allegedly the Council made a “targeted push” to engage concerned groups. This certainly did not include an obvious organisation such as the Wanstead Society, or the Wansteadium, Wanstead’s popular local news and events website. Likewise it did not include the monthly Wanstead Directory which is delivered to all Wanstead households.

You can sign our petition here.

Your local Lib Dem team has written to the leader of Redbridge Council asking him to halt the roll-out of the stalls until a full and proper consultation of local residents and businesses is carried out. We’ll keep you posted if he responds.