Smithfield and Billingsgate markets are leaving central London for Dagenham

Two of London’s oldest meat and fish markets are leaving the centre of the capital to move east following plans approved by the City of London Corporation.

Billingsgate and Smithfield markets will relocate to a purpose-built site at Dagenham Dock in east London, next to the A13, as part of a £1 billion project. A private bill will now be sent to parliament to confirm the City’s decision.

The move follows plans announced in 2019 to combine the wholesale markets under one roof along with New Spitalfields. It is still planned for the fruit, vegetable and flower market to move to Dagenham eventually, but New Spitalfields will remain at its current site in Leyton for the foreseeable future.

The City acquired the 42-acre Dagenham site, currently occupied by a power station, in 2018. The brownfield land will be transformed into a wholesale food market expected to be one of the largest in Europe over the next five years.

The move from Smithfield has faced vociferous opposition from the meat traders, who had threatened to invoke a royal charter to remain at the Farringdon site. The new market is expected to bring 2,700 new jobs to the borough of Barking and Dagenham — an increase from the 1,140 workforce currently employed across both markets — and support 7,850 jobs across the UK.

The closure of Smithfield as a market ends over 800 years of history of trading meat at the site. Billingsgate fish market, meanwhile, moved to its current Docklands location in 1982 from a Victorian building on Lower Thames Street in the City that has been converted into an exhibition and events venue. It is hoped that the closure of the Canary Wharf site will free up the land for the construction of 2,000 new homes.

Inner London has lost almost all its historic markets since the Second World War, although they have found a new life as retail and restaurant destinations. The former poultry market of Leadenhall and fruit-and-veg market of Spitalfields are now dining hubs feeding City workers, while the West End’s former fruit-and-veg market of Covent Garden has become one of the capital’s major tourist attractions for shopping and eating.

Smithfield Market is set to house the re-located Museum of London, which closes at its Barbican site on December 4 and will re-open in its new home as The London Museum in three years. Now a wholesale meat market in the centre of the city is something else that has passed into the 2,000-year history of the capital.