A Greenwich dad has challenged the local council’s street trading policy, calling it “unfair” after being called a “pest” by a local councillor.

Paul St Hilaire Sr, 69, claims he has sold ice cream in Greenwich town centre for 30 years, with the business being his primary form of income to raise his seven children.

The trader said that Greenwich Council began to clamp down on street trading since there was an increase in ice cream vans across the borough in the 1990s.

His son, Paul St Hilaire Jr, 37, said he wrote to a local councillor to ask if his father could apply to trade on a fixed site in the town centre.

Mr St Hilaire Jr told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS): “In 2012, [the councillor] said the position on ice cream trading in Greenwich town centre is closed.

"It’s not open for discussion, they’re not changing their position, that’s it. That’s the first I had heard of absolute no licensing of ice cream and trading in Greenwich town centre.”

The father and son then applied for a street trading licence to sell ice cream from a fixed site on King William Walk, beside Greenwich Park and the Old Royal Naval College.

Documents from Bromley Magistrates’ Court seen by the LDRS confirm that the council refused the application in November 2013 on the grounds of trading causing an “inconvenience” to other road users.

However, Mr St Hilaire Sr appealed this decision in the magistrates’ court in August 2014, and was granted the licence.

The dad said Greenwich Council then appealed to Woolwich Crown Court on the decision, including representatives from several of the authority’s departments citing the impact Mr St Hilaire Sr would have by trading on the site.

Court documents seen by the LDRS from February 2015 confirm that the court dismissed this appeal and ordered the council to grant Mr St Hilaire Sr a street trading licence for the site on King William Walk, as well as pay him £4,500 due to the costs of the appeal.

An FOI request from February 2016 seen by the LDRS shows that the council spent over £52,000 in litigation costs for the case.

Mr St Hilaire Sr said: “I think the judge was of the view that there can be open competition. There could be people of different means, different abilities to be able to afford, I think he described it as a posh ice cream, from the museum, and that of a Mr Whippy for a mother in tow with a child, that could only maybe afford to have an ice cream from an ice cream van.”

The ice cream trader then sold ice cream from his van for several months before applying to renew his street trading licence in August 2015, but an email between him and the council shows that the authority had agreed to remove King William Walk from its list of approved streets for street trading in its latest policy.

A further email from June 2016 confirms that the council had no records of formally consulting with traders on King William Walk, including Mr St Hilaire Sr, before removing the street from the approved list.

Mr St Hilaire Sr said: “When I applied, believing that I would have an automatic right to renewal, they then said, ‘We are not going to accept your application, because now that street is prohibited’. Unknown to me because I was not consulted, notwithstanding I was a licensee on that road.”

Mr St Hilaire Jr said: “There was a lot of attempted enforcement action at the time. There was the issuance of fixed penalty notices, as if we were parked there illegally. That all went to the Environment and Traffic Adjudicators at London Tribunals and they were all quashed. We had a legal right to trade under legislation. It just shows the lengths that the council were going to try and stop us from trading.”

Documents seen by the LDRS confirm at least 19 fines issued to Mr St Hilaire Sr by the council between April and May 2016.

Correspondence between Greenwich Council officers and staff at Royal Museums Greenwich from July 2015, obtained through FOI request, also shows plans to install a dropped kerb and double yellow lines at the trading site on King William Walk to improve emergency access for fire services.

A director at the museum said in the emails he felt installing the dropped kerb would “resolve” the situation, which he referred to as the “ice cream war”.

The emails also showed a council officer confirming the move would remove the site as a trading location. The installation was cited in the correspondence as costing the museum over £4,000.

Another email correspondence from April 2016 obtained through FOI request shows a local councillor referring to Mr St Hilaire Sr as a “pest” and claiming he has no right to trade on King William Walk.

Mr St Hilaire Jr said he tried to appeal the council’s decision to not renew his father’s licence, but he decided to withdraw from proceedings after the council’s solicitor made a call to his employer at the time.

Mr St Hilaire Sr said: “They were trying to suggest that Paul was communicating during the daytime or during the working week with the council, and therefore using the employer’s time. Paul was using his own time, he was doing nothing wrong, and his employer was happy with that.”

Following the withdrawal, Mr St Hilaire Jr made a complaint to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGO) on the council’s decision to remove King William Walk from its list of approved streets to trade on.

An LGO report on the case, published in May 2019, found Greenwich Council to be at fault for excluding King William Walk from the list after claiming it claimed it had received several complaints from residents.

The ombudsman found the authority appeared to have labelled enquiries about Mr St Hilaire Sr’s trade as complaints, and advised the council to reconsider including King William Walk in its list of approved streets for street trading.

However, Greenwich Council officers said in their report for a cabinet meeting in June 2023 that planning advice the council had received claimed the street was not appropriate for ice cream trading given its “sensitive location” in a World Heritage Site.

This policy was passed by the council at a full council meeting last month.

The appeal decision by the Planning Inspectorate for a previous planning application for another ice cream van to trade at the same site on King William Walk in July 2015 was also referenced in the council officers’ report.

The appeal was dismissed as the inspector found an ice cream van would “visually clutter” the views of the surrounding area and “adversely affect” the enjoyment of visitors.

A representation from Royal Museums Greenwich made in objection to the planning application, obtained through FOI request, shows concerns from the museum on how the van would affect the business of the museum’s café and franchises. It said the van would cause “unfair competition” and that the museum would “lose income”.

Mr St Hilaire Sr said: “What we want is fairness and justice. We want to be able to trade lawfully and fairly, to stop the council and museum’s partnership in the way they work together to stop fair and free trade. They are in effect colluding to stop genuine competition to protect their own revenue and incomes. This is completely unfair.”

He added: “I’ve been doing my business for 30 years. I’ve raised a family. I have all my children that are here working and providing services for the wider community. All I want is to be able to sell my ice cream.”

A Greenwich Council spokesperson told the LDRS: “With thousands of visitors passing by every year we understand the desirability of King William Walk, between the Maritime Museum and Greenwich Park, as a location for street trading and sales of ice cream.

"However, the location is within a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a designated Conservation Area. Ice cream sellers can cause obstructions if narrow pavements become blocked by queues impacting on pedestrians including the elderly, disabled and those with pushchairs.

The spokesperson said the council the council agreed to comply with the Ombudsman’s recommendations to reconsider including King William Walk as a location for street trading in May 2019.

They said the legal action that Mr St Hilaire Sr had  brought against the council has also been resolved.

They said: “Like many other local authorities, we have designated sensitive streets where street trading and or stationary and itinerant ice cream sales are prohibited. King William Walk is not designated for street trading or for the sale of ice cream.

"Different factors were taken into account in determining whether the site was suitable to be licensed including the views of the Local Planning Authority, it not being a predominantly commercial location, and the impact on such a historically sensitive area.”

They added: “It is our role to balance the needs of residents and visitors with the interests of street traders such as Mr St Hilaire, who could already trade in hundreds of other streets in our borough. To strike this balance we operate a Street Trading Policy, which was recently reviewed and approved by Full Council on 6 December 2023, following a statutory procedure and public consultation.”

Royal Museums Greenwich was approached but declined the opportunity to comment.