The people running the popular Bonnington Cafe in Bonnington Square, Vauxhall, have suddenly found themselves locked out of their business, right before the Christmas season starts.
UPDATE 1st Dec: Crowdfunder launched to help with legal fees
The Bonnington Cafe user group forwarded Brixton Buzz photos of their business which is now inaccessible and boarded up.
A post on the Facebook page says:
We found our cafe closed down by our landlord without taking us to a court or serving us an eviction notice.
All bookings are now cancelled.
We will be posting updates soon
Statement from the Bonnington Cafe user group
Today, our landlord, the Bonnington Centre Community Association’s (BCCA) management committee has boarded the café up and refused to allow our cooks’ access to the building.
We have been trying to negotiate a new lease since well before lockdown . We have been successfully running as a collective for 20 years.
We were not in agreement to the BCCA taking over the management of the cafe and we were not prepared to sign a lease which did not acknowledge our continuous tenancy.
Despite our efforts to address the lease via lawyers, the community centre management committee hired a security firm and shut all access to us, our customers and our community workshops.
We believe we are being illegally evicted.
We are setting up a crowdfunding campaign to assist us with these unexpected further legal costs.
We sincerely hope this is not the end of our beloved Café.
Brixton Buzz will be posting up more info as we receive it. In the meantime, if you think you can help them with legal advice, please contact the café at Bonningtoncafeusergroup@gmail.com
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Café info
Bonnington Cafe
11 Vauxhall Grove, London