‘The destruction of our livelihoods’ – Ridley Road Shopping Village traders to hold public meeting as ‘evictions’ loom

Fatimata owner of Bedding Outlet at RRSV. Photograph: Tamara Stoll

Ridley Road Shopping Village traders to hold a public meeting as “evictions” loom.

Ridley Road Shopping Village traders have invited representatives of Hackney Council, Hackney Police and Larochette Real Estate to a public meeting on Tuesday 17 March. This comes after traders were told to leave the shopping village by 31 March as their landlord, Larochette Real Estate, declined to renew their tenancies.

In an open letter, sent on 6 March along with an accompanying campaign video, the Ridley Road Shopping Village Traders Association (RRSVT) said of the closing date: “No proper warning. No time to liquidate our stock. The destruction of our livelihoods. Many of us won’t be able to start again or find another place to trade.

“We sell clothes, fabric, music, bedding, furniture, cultural goods. We provide something our customers don’t get in many other places: community. Many are Black and Global Majority. Many are low income. Many are elders.

“We were first served eviction notices in 2018. We’ve been fighting to stay for more than seven years.”

Ridley Road Shopping Village. Photograph: Johann Arens

The closure will affect the ground floor that houses independent retail units. The first and second floor studio spaces and offices will be able to operate as normal.

Larochette said the decision to close the indoor market came after the Metropolitan Police issued a Community Protection Warning in relation to antisocial behaviour.

However, the RRSVT claimed “the police have said that they have not requested the closure of the Indoor Market space and have not issued a closure order. They say they want the premises to be made safer. So do we!

“You say there are too few traders not involved in criminal activities for the site to be made economically viable. And yet, along with the police and the council, you are ones with the power to deal with individual instances of Anti-Social Behaviour. Not us”.

Save Ridley Road, a campaign group of local residents, market users and traders, reinforced the RRSVT’s claims in a press release on Thursday, saying “Hackney police are yet to publicly disclose the content of the Community Protection.

“Email communications from Larochette to journalists have referred to serious historic anti-social behaviour by a single trader, who was not granted a new lease when traders moved back into the building in April 2025”.

Referencing the single trader, the RRSVT said to Larochette: “You never communicated with us about them. The individual responsible no longer trades from the Shopping Village. So why are we being collectively punished?”

In response to the pushback, Hackney Council has asserted that it has no substantive powers to prevent the closure. This is despite the fact that in 2022 they vowed to take on the Shopping Village’s 15-year lease.

The RRSVT called the council’s lack of involvement a “total capitulation”.

“Hackney Council – in 2022 you made a flagship promise to take over the lease of the Shopping Village for 15 years. Now market officers claim they had no knowledge of Larochette’s plans. They say we can hire pitches on Hackney street markets. What happened to your promises?”

Save Ridley Road launched a letter writing campaign on 10 March that focuses on Hackney Council’s involvement in dictating the terms of traders’ leases, in an attempt to prevent the evictions.

Save Ridley Road member Danny Hayward said: “Larochette are trying to evict elder, migrant traders. People who have provided services to underserved communities for years.

“Meanwhile the council refers to anti-social behaviour and ‘confidence in the wider town centre.

“This is social cleansing, presented in the language of public safety. It is inhuman and deeply unfair. The Mayor talks about Hackney as a sanctuary borough. The least she can do is come to the meeting and hear traders speak.”

The RRSVT concluded their open letter by saying: “We deserve to be listened to and treated with respect, as people who have contributed to Hackney and its communities. We have worked in the Shopping Village day after day, week after week, offering a valuable service while the building is left as a construction site and the council makes promises that it never fulfils.

“We are not the ones who have questions to answer here”.

The public meeting will be held at Ridley Road Market Bar at 5pm on Tuesday 17 March.