|
|
 |
| |
Facing the crunch: Ali Celik and his daughter Sally are stuggling to keep their cafe in Fortess Road open |
‘We were late paying a rates bill so they sent in the bailiffs’
Cafe struggling to make ends meet left with bitter taste by council treatment
YESTERDAY found Sally Celik working in the cafe she has run for 12 years, thinking about justice, and waiting for the bailiffs to close her business down.
Late with her last payment of business rates to Camden Council, the Town Hall has given her a week to pay three months’ rates, cash in advance, and the bailiffs’ fees.
With custom dwindling in the recession, she doesn’t have the money to pay.
“Where is the justice in this?” she asked. “I have been a tenant for 12 years and paid business rates all that time and now that I am struggling, now that times are at their hardest, it is the council, the government that is doing this to us.”
Ms Celik and her father Ali works seven days a week, cannot afford staff, and cannot remember when they last took a holiday. For almost a year, as the downturn has loomed, they have seen business “decrease and decrease and decrease”.
Ms Celik has to pay around £500 in business rates on the first day of the month. Although she did not miss October’s payment, she could not make it until the middle of the month.
The council’s response was to order her to pay her rates up to January in advance, and instructed a bailiff, whose fees bring her bill up to £1,800.
With business as it is, and banks unwilling to lend, the sum is beyond them.
Ms Celik shows a thick pile of bills from utility companies which she has just paid. “Look at this – EDF, the gas, the water – I was late with all of these, but I paid them, late, exactly like the council. But they didn’t send bailiffs for it.
“There are three shops empty in this street. Do the council want another closed business here, and two people on the dole?”
Businesses in Fortess Road are not happy. Their recent contacts with local and central government have left a bitter taste. City Hall put an enforcement camera in Fortess Road, designed to police the bus lane but blamed for a plague of parking tickets, deterring customers.
Double yellow lines have also been placed outside Sally Celik’s cafe by the council.
Claims from the Town Hall or Mayor Boris Johnson that they are behind small businesses during the recession meet with contempt.
Next door to the Fortess Cafe, in the Hornsey Trust charity shop, manager Stephen Fisher is disgusted. “The government, the council, the Mayor, everyone talks about the importance of small businesses – so why do they treat them worse than a private landlord would?”
Another customer, Brian Alexander Crilly, who runs an antique shop in Fortess Road, has also had a brush with the bailiffs: “The council did exactly the same thing to me a few months ago. One week late with a payment and they write to tell you that you owe the month and the bailiffs’ fees.”
Camden Council’s publicity material boasts high levels of efficiency in the collection of council tax and business rates. Over 99 per cent of business rates were collected last year, a sum of £299million.
The council collects rates on behalf of central government – and is legally bound to collect rates in full.
Last night (Wednesday), a council spokeswoman said the council had already been as flexible as it could be with the Celiks by allowing them to pay cash and pay late on repeated occasions, but was required by law to demand a full three months payment.
She said: “We are very aware of the effect the economic downturn is having locally and the council is using its discretion by agreeing payment plans with those that are struggling. In this case, we agreed a payment plan with the owner, which they failed to keep.” |
 |
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
