The Golf Sale. The legendary never-ending Golf Sale. The sports shop down a Mayfair sidestreet near Oxford Circus. The iconic Golf Sale advertised along Oxford Street by men with sandwich boards since time immemorial. Much imitated, never beaten. The Golf Sale. Closing down. Nip down to Maddox Street fast if you want to snap up a cut-price putter...The lease is up.
Three landowners control most of the West End:
The Portman Estate
The Portman Estate is principally located within Marylebone, central London.The Duke of Westminster (Grosvenor Estate)
It encompasses Oxford Street from Marble Arch to Orchard Street, from Edgware Road in the west to beyond Baker Street in the east, and stretches north almost to Crawford Street. The Estate includes Portman Square, Manchester Square and the residential squares of Bryanston and Montague.
Key locations in Mayfair are: Mount Street, Grosvenor Street, North Audley Street, Duke Street, Park Streetand HM the Queen. Details of Crown London holdings here.
Key locations in Belgravia are: Grosvenor Gardens, Motcomb Street, Elizabeth Street, Eaton Square, Pimlico Road, Ebury Street
(Not forgetting Cadogan Estates' massive - though diminishing - holdings in Chelsea.)
Between them, they own enough to make the market.
The Portman website advertises retail premises to let:
Shops are available on new Full Repairing and Insuring leases for 5 years, without rent review and outside the Security of tenure provisions of the Landlord & Tenant Act 1954.Are we just starting to see the effects of the 2004 amendments to the Landlord & Tenant Act 1954? And we've just passed Lady Day, when rents are due... I'd love to know more, but alas do not have a subscription to Estates Gazette. What sort of business is prepared to take on a five year full repairing lease without right of renewal? Someone selling Olympic tschotskes, maybe? You'd have to be reckless, unless there were no choice.
The erosion of tenants' rights that began under the Tories has continued apace under New Labour. Under the guise of market liberalisation, most new residential lets are unprotected; new agricultural and business lettings suffer the same sort of insecurity. It doesn't allow a business to put down roots. It doesn't make for cohesive communities. It can cause dreadful hardship. It took generations to build up security of tenure but it seems to have been pissed away in under twenty years.
On their website (which doesn't let me link to a specific page) the Cadogan Estate exonerates itself from blame for the homogenisation of the High Street:
Today, Cadogan's holding in Chelsea is substantial in value, but is nevertheless still patchy. The assumption, for instance, that Cadogan owns everything on the King's Road is wrong. And the associated assumption that Cadogan is therefore responsible for the influx of High Street brands is profoundly inaccurate.Not their fault, then. No-one's fault.
1 comment:
Well commented - re the Portman Estate. This Landlord seems to be leading the charge against tenant rights. I know of a few cases where tenants are being subject to questionable tactics by the Portman Estate in order to change tenant rights - to the detriment of the tenants.
Apparently they have resorted to threats! ‘Sign away your rights or be beheaded’ (well not quite). Has anything really changed over the past many hundreds of years? For those renting short term the experience is probably great - but for long term tenants or 'residents') 'Beware of the Landlord' seems good advice! Don’t forget that in the Time of King Henry VIII alone an estimated 72,000 men disinherited of their land were hanged. So who should really own all these so-called ‘Great British Estates’?
Is the blood of your ancestors among the many killed in the quest to disenfranchise England’s population for the benefit of the few – those who refer to themselves as the’ British Aristocracy’?
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