Nine months ago, the City of London Corporation told us that our challenge to a decision that threatened to put our company out of business was ‘hopeless’ and legally unarguable. So we have been pinching ourselves at the news that a High Court judge has ruled that four out of our five grounds for a legal claim are permissible. It is full steam ahead for a Judicial Review of the decision to award the three North London park cafés we have built up over more than eight years — at Queens Park, Parliament Hill Fields Lido, and Highgate Wood — to the Australian-themed Daisy Green café chain.
To jump this hurdle is a huge victory for our colleagues and their achievement in making the threatened cafés places that north Londoners wanted to defend, with a 25,000-signature petition and contributions to our legal fund. It is also a big tribute to the lawyers who rallied to help us, some taking minimal fees or working pro bono: Leigh Day solicitors in particular, and barristers Remi Reichhold and Gretta Schumacher.
Courts don’t decide whether public bodies make the ‘right’ decision. Instead, they rule narrowly on whether the rules have been followed. But outside a courtroom the big picture also counts.
In the case of the Heath and other park cafés, the City of London insists that major funding is required. ‘Bring in the grown-ups and let’s talk figures,’ sounds like common sense. It’s true the cafés need investment. But the Corporation is responsible for their structure; the money is for fit out. The assumption is the more spending the better, and, again, this might look like common sense. But there are caveats.
First, no one ploughs in money on a scale that dwarfs any corresponding increase in income unless the real aim is not to run a café but to engage in property speculation. Community assets should stay in the community, not become targets for investors. Just look at the water industry or the railway companies.
Also, money people are not always the best judges of public taste. The Medici were bankers, and cultivated ones: they spent their wealth on art that millions still travel to see in Florence. The City of London’s own 19th-century worthies were also rich, but only tiny fraction of tourists who visit the Uffizi will seek out the Guildhall Gallery to see what they chose to fund: works like (see below) The Lord Mayor Presenting An Address to His Majesty Louis-Philippe at Windsor Castle, Octover 1844 (apologies to Atkinson Grimshaw, James Tissot, John Millais, and some gems among the dross).
Up and down the country there is a ferment of interest in raising money locally to keep local assets in the hands of the community. It’s not too late for the Corporation to look up from their spreadsheets and consider alternatives to a world of financialisation and mutual back scratching.
We are ready to contribute time, to raise cash, and to build bridges.
