Defiance in the market, with Robin Smith, front left [Reynard D’Avoine]

MARKET traders rallied this week after a water supply victory against the city council, with a warning: “Hands off our market!”

Stall-holders in Berwick Street had been plunged into chaos after being alerted to a plan to switch-off essential taps at each end of the historic market street. They brought buckets to the photocall with Extra to symbolise how they were facing having to fill up from another supply 200 metres away in Peter Street.

Westminster City Council said on Wednesday it had abandoned its plans following the backlash.

Despite the win, there are concerns that the taps plot is the latest in a long-running series of attempts to undermine the market and threaten its survival.

Robin Smith, who runs the Soho Dairy, said: “The water is the blood supply to a market. You can’t have a market without water. There’s no environment to work and produce. We have to pass hygiene standards which go through Westminster and they make it tough enough already. Them wanting to cut off the water is like cutting water off to a plant.

“It’s impossible. It sounds like a minor thing but think about carrying a bucket filled with water 25 metres, let alone 200 metres, and you will start to understand the issue.”

“No one is more relieved than me about this outcome. We had reached boiling point, and not for the first time.

“If you think about what this market has been through, with the original plans for Kemp House. And the privatisation fight we had. So there is always this suspicion here that there is a slow moving progress, on the part of developers, to Carnaby-fy Berwick Street Market.

“Developers don’t want to see markets. They want to see retail.”

Berwick Street traders (above and below) are angry about the attempt to ‘cut off the water supply’ [Reynard D’Avoine]

He added: “I am not against the councillors. They have helped us in the past. But there is something probably higher up in the council, in the system, that keeps chipping away at you. The council should be thinking ‘how do we make it better for the traders?’ Not harder.”

Mr Smith said the market, which is dismantled and put back up every day, is a “vital piece” of Soho community life and a key driver for its celebrated “social buzz”. But he said it felt like Soho was at a crossroads, with residents upping sticks, far fewer people coming in to socialise, and the Soho Parish School under threat of closure. The state-funded school is in a battle for survival due to a huge drop off in admissions, a trend around the capital that is clearly linked to a lack of affordable housing.

There are concerns that developers, with the city council’s blessing, are looking to further cement the transformation of Soho as a “visitor economy concept” rather than an area that works for the people living and working there.

Market traders also said they were concerned that the council was spending on a regeneration of Rupert Street, potentially with a view to moving them there. “Is that where they want us to go?” said Mr Smith. “Because if it is, we will not.”

Initially the council had said one of the taps, in Tyler’s Court, had to be switched off because it was on private property, but this was later found not to be the case. The other tap, in Broadwick/Berwick Street, will be repaired instead of removed, according to emails sent to the traders by the council.

Last week the council sent a lengthy statement about the reasons the not-fit-for-purpose taps had to be removed.

Cllr David Boothroyd, the cabinet member for finance and corporate property, had said: “We will continue to regularly engage with market traders about taps for Berwick Street, and any other future locations, to make sure it works for everyone and sticks to health and safety standards.”