A Peckham travel agent was evicted from his office of 23 years just weeks before Christmas, after withholding rent from his landlord in a dispute about smoke from a next door café.
Abel Nwanokwai turned up to his family business by Peckham Rye Station at the end of November to find out he had been locked out by The Arch Company, which manages the property on behalf of Network Rail.
The 69-year-old owner of Unique Travel UK had been delaying paying rent to his landlord for over two years due he said to smoke from a neighbouring café’s extractor system.
Mr Nwanokwai believes The Arch Company, as the café’s landlord, should have put more pressure on the business to sort out the problem, which he claims put off customers.
He said: “I’m 68, 69 next year. Nobody needs this at my age. I just want justice. I received no warning. I came one morning and it was shut up. All my things are still in there: my money, laptop and my files.
“I have asthma and I couldn’t spend much time in the office because of the smoke. But it was not just a problem for my business, the smoke was polluting the area. I once had a lady who was knocking on my door saying ‘come out’ because the smoke was so bad she thought there was a fire.”
Coal Rooms, the café in question, shut down in July, with former owner Richard Robinson blaming dwindling footfall linked to ongoing construction work at Peckham Rye station in an interview with Southwark News this month.
Three months earlier, in April, Coal Rooms’ application to retain its extraction system was rejected by Southwark Council. In a report, planning officers said the ventilation mechanism dispersed fumes ‘at a low level’ into a space with businesses and pedestrians.
Describing controls in place to mitigate issues as ‘ineffective’, the report said the system had an ‘unacceptable and detrimental impact upon the amenity and health of those visiting and working in the area’.
The council’s planning department had previously served an enforcement notice on the café in 2022 for fitting an extractor system that was positioned in a different way to proposals approved in 2015.
Despite this, last year Coal Rooms told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that it was ‘confident’ its extraction system was compliant with council requirements — adding that it had invested in upgrades to ‘mitigate any problems’.
Hausu, a new restaurant which advertises itself as offering ‘vintage hi-fidelity sound and modern cuisine’ has since opened in the premises previously occupied by Coal Rooms.
A spokesperson for The Arch Company said: “We never like to lose a customer and we’re disappointed that we were not able to reach a solution with Unique Travel to address their very significant level of rental arrears. Despite our attempts to do so, it’s unfortunate that we were not able to agree a payment plan that would have enabled them to stay in their premises.”