Family Takes Pie Shop Fight To High Court

12:00am Saturday 1st January 2000

A FAMILY-RUN pie shop will be battling upper crust big business in the High Court.

Goddard's Pie Shop, which has been dishing-up pies to punters for nearly half a century, is fighting to remain in Greenwich Church Street.

And the Goddard family is going all the way to the High Court to challenge a compulsory purchase order placed on its premises by Greenwich Council.

The block which houses the pie shop, is being compulsorily purchased to develop shops above and around the planned DLR station at Cutty Sark Gardens.

Station developers Centros Miller Ltd want to refurbish the shops to the same standard as the rest of the development - even though the existing businesses say they have enough cash to do it themselves.

Jeff Goddard has owned the pie shop business with his brother Kane and mother Pam, since his father died in 1990.

He said: "Our business has been established for 100 years.

"My grandfather opened this shop in 1952 and since the arrival of the Cutty Sark, tourism has increased.

"We are adamant we want to stay in that property because it is the right style for our business. It's old - the centre part is more than 300 years old and the atmosphere is perfect.

"We feel we deserve to get some benefits from the millennium and it shouldn't all go to big business."

A spokesman for the DLR monitoring group which is campaigning on behalf of the shop owners said: "It has become clear the council's only objective is to kick the owners out and to hand the buildings over to developers, Centros Miller."

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