Café Blah’s owners got locked out by their landlord. So they locked themselves in
‘There’s no other option for us — they’ve forced our hand’
Dear readers — Today Ophira and Jack are taking us behind the scenes of the ongoing battle between the owners of beloved Withington institution Café Blah and their landlord, H Homes. After H Homes changed the locks on the premises, owners Adam Porrino and Tess Parkinson managed to smuggle themselves back into their own cafe, where they, a few regulars, some musicians, and a tenant’s union rep hunkered down for a sit-in protest. Will Café Blah prevail? Read on to learn more after your regularly scheduled Mill briefing.
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Café Blah’s owners got locked out by their landlord. So they locked themselves in
By Ophira Gottlieb and Jack Dulhanty
The lock-out
On Monday, Tess Parkinson was crossing Davenport Avenue just off Wilmslow Road, heading towards Café Blah, the local business she has co-owned with Adam Porrino for the last four years. In that time, the cafe has become an institution in Withington Village — a high street that has seen such a proliferation of independents in recent times that it's now a case study for cities across Europe wanting to develop their own. The cafe, which transforms into a bar by evening, is known throughout the community for its regular and esoteric events: from bands and book quizzes to spoken word performances and avant-garde film screenings. They are also now well known for their annual ‘Party for the People’ festival, the third edition of which went ahead just last Saturday.
As Parkinson crossed the road, she looked up at the offices of H-Homes – a property management company and Cafe Blah’s landlords, whose premises are above the cafe – and she saw that there were more faces in the window than usual. “They were looking down at me,” Parkinson remembers, “trying to see my reaction.” She went to the side door of the cafe and put her key in. It wouldn’t open. The side door has, admittedly, always been a bit stiff, but this was different.
H Homes, it transpired, had changed the locks without telling Parkinson and Porrino, escalating a contested rent negotiation that has been dragging on for over a year now. Café Blah’s tenancy expired last August; in the months preceding, the owners had been struggling to agree to new lease terms with their landlord. “Obviously we were panicking,” Parkinson said.
Then one day, out of the blue, Porrino and Parkinson received an email from H Homes, signed off by a new and previously uninvolved agent. This email stated that any and all previous lease agreements were now void. Instead they offered the owners of Cafe Blah a new agreement, with a 60% rent increase (approximately £550 extra a month), with further yearly increases over a five year period. “They said to us that everything that had gone before, all previous correspondence, was out the window,” said Parkinson.
From that point on, according to Porrino and Parkinson, H Homes changed tactics. The pair explained that they were sent aggressive emails, late night demands, and unrealistic deadlines. “Potentially, H Homes realised that tactic wasn’t working,” said Porrino, “cause they agreed to meet us in person. Then the agent came in with a guy we didn’t recognise. A guy we now know as Mat.”
Mathew George Rees was once the director of H Homes Ltd, but resigned from the role after just over a year, back in November of 2021. A 2022 article about Reese in The Sun reveals that he purchased his first property, in Moss Side, at the age of 18, and was the owner of 25 properties by the time he was 25. An article published in May of last year in the Manchester Evening News, meanwhile, takes you on a tour of his £3.5 million mansion in Wilmslow. Having resigned from his role as director of H Homes Ltd nearly three years ago, he’s apparently still involved in the business, as “he seems to be the person with the most control here,” Porrino explained.
Matt brought with him to Cafe Blah yet another lease that was moderately cheaper than the last, but with a higher incremental rise, and once again the name on the document was incorrect. According to Porrino, he and the H Homes agent entered the cafe to discuss the lease while the business was open and customers were present, and later pressured the cafe owners not to seek legal advice. They sought it regardless, and by February they had filed a Section 26 — informing their landlord that they wished to renew their lease within six to twelve months, covering them for the fact that their original lease had now expired. H Homes objected to the S26 on the grounds that they wished to expand their own offices downstairs, into the cafe premises. “Which was the only way they could possibly get us out,” said Porrino.
Last week, Cafe Blah’s Section 26 officially expired, and the Cafe’s solicitor missed the deadline to send a further S26. They were now less protected by the tenancy act, but they had not received an eviction notice, and had no reason to believe that they were being kicked out. They had paid their month’s rent for the property for October, and that rent hasn’t been returned.
The owners weren’t only shocked to find themselves locked out; they soon after discovered that the cafe premises were also being advertised for rent on Zoopla — despite the property owner’s claims that they intended to use the property for their own purposes, as justification for rejecting the S26. H Homes then quickly took the Zoopla advertisement down. (The Mill contacted H Homes both by phone and email to ask them about this listing and the other allegations outlined in this article, but we did not receive a reply.)
Having been left with no choice, locked out of their business with no explanation from the landlord, the pair took it upon themselves to take action — and a lock-out became a lock-in.
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