Maloney’s business, car repair shop JC Motors, left the site in November 2024 but the arch remains empty. PfL says it offered Maloney several options, including gradually increasing rents or an alternative location on the estate with lower rent levels.
He has since set up at a shared site in Leyton, but says he still doesn’t understand PfL’s justification for such steep increases.
“I wouldn’t wish it on any other tenant, but unfortunately I’m still hearing people are getting squeezed and pressured and rent’s been doubled and tripled,” he says.
“I don’t understand why they’re doing this to communities. These are businesses that serve locals and they’ve been wiped out.”
For many of its sites, PfL says that the rent rises are simply a case of bringing them in line with the current market rate.
However, Derec Hickman, who runs Guardians of the Arches, a campaign group for the 6,000 small businesses occupying London’s railway arches, believes the valuation process is deeply flawed.
This is because market rates are set by chartered surveyors according to sales of comparable properties in the area, and therefore risk overlooking the nature of the existing business model, he says.
“It means the guy that’s selling newspapers is now being told he has to make the same amount of profit and pay the same rent as the guy that’s selling coffee and croissants or bottles of wine,” says Hickman.
“They’re all being told to pay the same amount so the landlords are able to say that their properties are worth that much.”
PfL also claims that some of the sites have been expanded and refurbished, which increases the value of the land. But Nicolson, of East End Trades Guild, says that a large part of the inherent value of the premises stems from the fact that business owners spent time and money investing in them decades ago.
“If people hadn’t gone to the arches, taken a risk and made the areas as desirable in the first place, [TfL] couldn’t make as much money now,” she says.
