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Ridley Road Market is a bonafide east London institution. Starting life as a predominantly Jewish market in the late 1880s, it’s evolved over the decades to become a multicultural hub with more than 150 stalls selling a plethora of largely Afro-Caribbean, Asian and Turkish goods. But, for the second time in the last ten years, it’s future is in jeopardy.
While the outdoor part of Ridley Road market is managed by Hackney Council, its indoor area (formerly known as Ridley Road Shopping Village) is privately owned. It was purchased by its current landlord, Larochette Real Estate Inc, a decade ago for £6.5m.
As reported by the Londoner, 13 traders in the indoor section of the market have been handed letters in recent weeks telling them that they needed to leave the building by the end of March. The letters reportedly stated that the leases had to end because of a Met crackdown on antisocial behaviour in the market.
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However, the Londoner reports that the Met disputes that claim and denied that it had ‘requested the closure of the indoor market space or issued a closure order’. A member of Hackney Council added that the letter misrepresented the Met’s position and called on the council to support the traders and the market is preserved.
This, of course, isn’t the first time that the indoor market has been under threat. Back in 2018, Larochette submitted plans to turn the space into a block of offices and luxury flats. The campaign by locals to save the market was one of the largest community campaigns in the area in the last decade. After protests, widespread media coverage and hundreds of letters of complaints, the plans were rejected.
Then in 2022, Hackney Council committed to taking on a 15-year lease of the property, once Larochette had carried a six-month refurbishment of the building. Campaigners hailed the move as a ‘victory’ which would ‘end years of uncertainty about the future of small businesses trading in the indoor shopping village’. But that refurb ended up taking three years and traders only moved back in last year. Hackney Council still hasn’t taken over the lease.
You can follow the Save Ridley Road campaign here, support it by writing to the Mayor of London or your local councillors and MPs, and read the full Londoner report here.
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