London: Solicitor son of ice cream seller who has been fighting for 13 years with Greenwich council to get his dad’s ice cream pitch back to take the case to the High Court

The Guardian

When he was growing up, Paul St Hilaire Jr thought his dad was the next best thing to Willy Wonka: no one else’s dad sold ice-cream for a living.

“I remember sitting in the van, eating my Mr Whippy and feeling superior to children queueing up outside,” St Hilaire Jr remembered.

But for the past 13 years, the son – now a solicitor – has been fighting to get his dad’s ice-cream pitch back in a David and Goliath battle with the local council. The family have been to court about 10 times. Next month they will take their case to the high court.

“It would be funny if it wasn’t so heartbreaking,” said St Hilaire Sr, 70. “All this fuss, upset and expense over ice-cream.”

St Hilaire Sr began trading on King William Walk in Greenwich in the early 1980s to support his seven children, who now largely work in the NHS and education. The contested pitch on the historic boulevard is one of the most popular spots in Greenwich: look north, and you can see the Royal Naval College and the Cutty Sark – look south, and you can see the park and the Royal Observatory.

“I loved selling ice-cream there, it was beautiful and busy,” said St Hilaire Sr. “My customers came from all over the world but had one similarity: they didn’t want the expensive ice-cream sold by the National Maritime Museum nearby – they wanted a Mr Whippy.”

But in 2004, the council started regulating ice-cream vans. King William Walk was closed for business because it was too narrow to accommodate ice-cream punters and pedestrians alike.

In 2011, however, the National Maritime Museum opened its Sammy Ofer wing, substantially widening a section of King William Walk. The St Hilaires saw a chance to nab the best ice-cream pitch in Greenwich and applied for a licence.

That’s when battle commenced: the council rejected the application and held firm to its decision: “King William Walk is a narrow and busy historic street,” said a spokesperson. “We need to make sure everyone can move around safely and easily, so there are restrictions on street trading here to avoid queues blocking the way.”