Two Islington businesses stand on a once bustling street. Highbury Library and Premier Plumbing sit side by side in the shadow of the Emirates stadium. Drayton Park road, their shared home, is nothing like it was one year ago.
This tale of dizzying change in the space of 12 months is a familiar story across the borough. Stumble through Islington’s criss crossing streets and what you find is each business, storefront, cafe in its own fight for survival. A series of upheavals have affected the lives and livelihoods of Islington’s business owners: the pandemic, Brexit and Low-Traffic Neighbourhoods. For them, it has been the grimmest year on record.
Islington Now has spent time listening to and documenting their stories.
This year has been “a double hit… a triple hit,” said Andrew Nightingale from The Highbury Library, a wine and cocktail bar. He was a friendly, optimistic character when we spoke on the phone. While The Highbury Library managed to keep afloat as a click-and-collect service, successive lockdowns have massively reduced customers and sales. “People are more adventurous with what they drink”, Andrew said, “which has helped us,” but this is ”still minimal compared to what we would normally make.”
Andrew acknowledges that they are among the fortunate ones. The British Beer and Pub Association recently announced that in the last year 2,000 pubs closed permanently, 2.1 billion pints of beer sales were lost and £8.2 million in trade value has been wiped out across the sector. The Lamb, a pub on Holloway Road, narrowly avoided closure by launching a Crowdfunder page last year. By February 2021, they had collected just under £25,000 in donations, smashing the original £15,000 target. However, unlike the Highbury Library, The Lamb will remain closed until May 17. “That’s ruddy weeks away,” said the owners on Twitter, “and we’ve already been shut since the start of November.”
In addition to the collateral damage of successive lockdowns, Andrew explains that Brexit has made it harder to import goods from abroad.
Kaski, one part of the sibling-duo running The BARN London, an independent cafe on Holloway Road, made similar comments about the rising price of imported food and drinks. Things that used to cost 50p, now cost £2 to buy, Kaski said. However, “we can’t increase the prices”, he said.
With schools opening, trade is picking up, Kaski explained. Like Andrew, he was relatively optimistic about the future. “People are dying to come out – [we] should be okay.”
However, Kaski added, a lot of regular customers have moved away from London over the past year – by regulars I assume he means young 20-30 somethings who drink coffee in chunky cardigans with a houseplant cradled under their arm. “They’ve moved to Surrey with their parents,” said Kaski. “[They] don’t want to pay rent.”
Then, there is the impact of Low-Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs).
The roads are “quieter” now, Kaski said. People try to avoid the main roads because of the traffic and there are no football crowds.
“It’s made a difficult time even more difficult,” said Andrew, who was less ambivalent about his feelings than his neighbours. “Deliveries take 3 or 4 times longer. My sister lives on the other side of the barrier, so can’t drive quickly from home to work.”
“It’s even more painful” for the business next door because they rely on passing traffic, said Andrew.
Two doors down are Premier Plumbing & Heating Merchants. Unlike the surrounding bars and restaurants, this business stayed open over the last year. Run by a team of five, I spoke to Matt Dingwall, a pragmatic, sober-sounding staff member.
It’s not Covid that caused the most problems for this business, said Matt. It’s Low-Traffic Neighbourhoods.
The impact has been “massive,” he explained. As a result of the council’s traffic barriers, introduced in January 2021, they’ve lost a lot of their passing trade. “If people do make the journey, it adds another 30 to 40 minutes.” He said one customer who lives around the corner visited them last night. It usually takes them five minutes. Yesterday, it took 40.
A councillor came to speak to the plumbers about the People-Friendly Streets scheme. Matt made it clear the council offered little relief. The council did not respond to Islington Now’s request for comment. “We are dealing with Covid, and then they chuck LTNs on you. It’s one thing after another,” said Matt.
Bence Pillinger of Laki Kane, a tiki bar on Upper Street, was more gracious about the council’s help during the pandemic. “Islington Council has been extremely helpful,” he said. These are “exciting times,” he said on the phone as he called me from Hungary. The last year has had an “incredible financial impact” but “hospitality is our passion.” He plans to fly back to the UK in time for the bar’s partial reopening in April.
Truly the “toughest thing,” said Bence, “is not being able to do what you love.”
