Portobello Road

Portobello Road antiques dealers have a fresh chance to air their views about police cover in the area now that a public meeting has been rearranged.

Pressure for better police cover is starting to pay off for Portobello antiques dealers – but they say there is still much to be done. The traders have been incensed by cuts that left just four officers to patrol the area in pairs on Saturdays despite a recent rise in robberies, and demanded action on extra patrols.

COMMENT: More than 60,000 visitors on a summer Saturday, one of the most popular tourist spots in the UK, a name so recognised internationally that the local council wants to brand a Crossrail station after it... there are plenty of reasons to protect Portobello‘s antiques trade.

An alarming rise in violent robberies on antiques dealers in Portobello Road has spurred them into action to call for better police cover, CCTV cameras and even private security guards.

It’s closing time for another antiques market in the Portobello Road area where dealers increasingly fear for the future of their trade.

Seven-day trading in the basement at the Admiral Vernon Arcade has been given the green light despite fears it might sound the death knell for antiques in Portobello.

Planning issues affecting the future of antique trading in Portobello came to a head last week as councillors and their own planning officers fell out at a public meeting in front of dozens of campaigners.

Traders and residents of Portobello are rallying support to fight an appeal to allow seven-day trading at the Admiral Vernon Arcade.

Supporters of the Save The Portobello Market Campaign called for a referendum on a directly elected mayor for Kensington and Chelsea.

Just as traders in Portobello were celebrating victory in the Admiral Vernon dispute, they heard that the Good Fairy arcade across the road had been closed as the freeholders, Carmac Portobello Ltd, had gone into administration.

STALLHOLDERS throughout Portobello’s arcades planned to don ‘Marion’ masks last Saturday in a mass protest over the latest turn of events in the market.

DEALERS at Portobello Road were celebrating a dramatic victory last week after the council rejected a planning application which campaigners said would have been “devastating” for the antiques market.

ANOTHER threat to the antiques trade on Portobello Road has been dealt with an application to open up the basement of the Admiral Vernon Arcade to seven-day trading.

WHEN the Commission for Retail Preservation was set up by Kensington and Chelsea Council in 2006, the borough’s mayor at the time, Tim Ahern, was quoted in an official release, as follows:

THE antiques trade in Portobello Road has suffered another blow, with the demise of The Good Fairy market now confirmed. Added to what has gone before, it calls into question Kensington and Chelsea Council’s entire vision for the borough as set out in its Core Strategy, currently being reviewed by the Planning Inspectorate, which talks time and again about how Portobello should be protected as a Special District Centre.

TRADERS and campaigners at Portobello Road are urging fellow dealers and members of the public to attend the planning meeting regarding the redevelopment of The Good Fairy Market taking place at Kensington & Chelsea Town Hall on Tuesday, July 6.

DEALERS at another antiques arcade in Portobello Road are having to vacate the centre after being given notice to quit.

A TOPICAL July release from the Antique Collectors' Club (ACC) publishing group is Portobello Road, a collection of previously unpublished photographs of the famous market taken over three years in the early 1960s by photographer John Petty.

AFTER being closed since early March, The Good Fairy Market in Portobello Road reopened on May 8, to the surprise of some dealers at the Saturday market.

LAST week's letter from the deputy leader of Kensington and Chelsea Council, Councillor Daniel Moylan, (click here to read letter) replying to my commentary on the Portobello planning dispute in ATG No 1937, took me to task for swallowing 'uncritically the claims being made about the council' with regards to Portobello Road, 'almost as if he is unaware that there are elections on and that Portobello lies at the heart of a ward being bitterly contested by Labour and the Lib Dems'.