Britain's oldest Indian restaurant, Veeraswamy, risks closure

Transcript

00:00I'm Ranjit Mathrani. I and my wife are the owners of MW Eat, a restaurant company,

00:07of which Viraswamy is one of our major and most prominent restaurants.

00:15We were informed on the 18th of June last year, we asked to come and have a meeting

00:20with the property manager of the Crown, ostensibly to discuss the fact that there

00:27had been a block drainage in the building which had caused flooding. He informed us in a bland

00:34manner that they were not renewing the lease when it came up for renewal in June 2025.

00:40And the reason which the Crown gave was the fact that they needed our 11 square metres

00:48of a slightly pokey entrance to the ground floor in order to extend their reception area

00:55of their adjoining lift and entrance to their office building. And then we went back to

01:00them and made different suggestions. They rejected us all. We, based on legal advice, took the

01:08step of serving what's called a Section 26 notice, which is where a tenant who is protected under

01:17the Landlord and Tenants Act can serve notice and landlord requested a renewal of the lease,

01:23to which they obviously have resisted that. And so that matter is in the courts. We're not leaving

01:30imminently. We're not closing down imminently. The issue is going to be, in that case, what will the

01:36courts decide if we cannot reach some agreement with the Crown to have us remain here. My wife, my sister-in-law and I,

01:46I devoted a lot of time and energy to sustaining, building this up, nurturing it. It has been

01:52yet another, quite a significant burden. This has been a challenging time.