Cinema closure: 'There are not many places like it left'

Gabriella Wilkie is disappointed Catford Mews has closed

"Everybody would be there, everybody was welcome."

Gabriella Wilkie, 38, is one of many people who live in Catford who worry the area will be left without a vital place to bring the community together if its only cinema remains closed.

Catford Mews, a cinema and food hall located in the Catford Centre, has been shut since 29 October when the building was reclaimed by Lewisham Council over rent arrears.

"There are not many places like that left in south-east London," Gabriella says of Catford's only cinema. "I worry the divide you get elsewhere is coming," she explains, adding that it is as a "massive loss to the community".

'Increasingly impossible terms'

Another Catford resident Zak Kilburn, 39, echoes Gabriella's concerns.

“It was one of the few openly queer-aligned spaces in the area," he says.

"You could sit and have a coffee with someone down the road, and where are you going to do that now?

"They’re clearly not going to be bringing it back in the same form.”

Lewisham Council said the cinema’s operator, the Really Local Group (RLG), owed more than £650,000 and had been in arrears since 2019.

The authority said it could not afford to continue to go without the money that was owed to the Catford Regeneration Partnership (CRPL), a firm owned by the council that controls the property's lease.

The council also says the firm behind the cinema was given a £50,000 grant to refurbish part of the venue but never carried out the work.

A petition to save the venue has received more than 8,000 signatures

In a statement published on Facebook, the RLG said the council’s closure notice had come as a surprise and that in May it had agreed a 10-year deal with the authority to operate the venue.

The statement added: “Since then, the council has delayed completing this agreed deal by throwing increasingly impossible terms our way, concluding with a demand for an impossibly large upfront payment at [the] end of September.

"It’s a great shame Lewisham Council has decided to take this destructive path and force an integral community hub to close.”

'Significant rent-free period'

In response the council said: “Much of what RLG have said in their statement about Catford Mews isn’t true.

“RLG/Catford Mews held a lease until 2029, the terms of which had not been fulfilled by RLG due to their failure to pay bills to CRPL.

“We recognise operations like Catford Mews were severely impacted during the pandemic.

"In response to this, CRPL provided a significant rent-free period.

"The council, in addition, chose to support RLG with a total of £77,890 of additional financial support during this period."

A Change.org appeal to save the venue has received more than 8,000 signatures since it was set up on Tuesday.