One Year On ~ An email sent by Chris Hill in May 2025

One Year On

Dear {first name},

This bank holiday marks one year since we moved the business, our staff and over 2000 products from 5 Cherry Tree Walk to 46 The Calls.

One year on, I’ve achieved the dream! A fantastic shop and retail environment where we can show-off every product we have selected in the best way possible AND a bar with an on-premise license, where our hand-picked team of industry legends get to show off our carefully curated range of wines, spirits, beers and soft drinks: by-the glass, in cocktails and aperitifs: all paired with the finest cheese and charcuterie Yorkshire has to offer.

First, I must thank the whole team, my dream could not have been realised without the unbelievable hard work of all my staff: Nolan, Max, Sophie, Mark, Imogen, Sai, Oscar and Beck, I salute you! Words cannot describe how proud I am of what we’ve created.

The best thing about this team is that we are not ready to rest on our laurels, everyone brings with them a constant drive to improve and move forward. We’ll be changing our by-the-glass list and cocktail every 2 months this year, showcasing new and exciting products that we’re always on the lookout for. In July Latitude will be 17 years young and I’m still just as excited to find new wines and spirits as when we started.

Heartfelt thanks also goes to our new landlord: Paul and Rob of the Yorkshire Design Group have restored my faith in commercial property developers. They have a genuine interest in their tenants’ success and are permanently striving to improve our little corner of Leeds. Their support has been invaluable, and the polar-opposite to the abusive relationship I ended up in under a railway arch.

I also want to take this anniversary as a chance to bring everyone up to date on our relationship with our old landlords, the Arch Co and Network Rail. The blog I wrote on handing my notice in on 5 Cherry Tree Walk has been read by thousands and even discussed on Radio 4!

Despite handing the keys back at the end of May last year, the abuse and incompetence at the hands of the Arch Co has not stopped.

My last interaction with the Arch Co was when I handed back the keys. I spent 3 weeks after the move stripping out as much of the furniture and fixtures as I possibly could. However, as we peeled back the layers the true damage of 30+ years of water incursion became more and more obvious.

[A quick re-cap: In the early ‘90’s Network Rail lined the arch in an effort to stop the damp that collects on top of the arch and accumulates in the 150-year-old brickwork from entering the commercial space. The only problem is they failed to put in sufficient guttering to take the water away, so it pooled and collected in mouldy corners, puddles formed frequently and furniture and stock were constantly being damaged. I spent 10 years trying to get Network Rail to admit their mistake and improve the guttering to no avail. Then the Arch Co bought our lease off Network Rail and every time I tried to discuss the damp issue I was told that it was Network Rail’s responsibility to carry out a back-to-brick inspection, to identify the problem and propose a solution. As far as I’m aware, NR still haven’t found the funds to carry out that inspection, despite one being required at least every 12 years, as explicitly defined in the tenancy agreement.]

Following the handover meeting I was presented with an initial dilapidations report that demanded I returned the arch back to a condition that was actually better than new, and certainly way better than the condition the arch was in when I moved in, in 2008. This list of improvements included a demand to replace rotten window frames, the same frames the Arch Co had replaced 3 years before, because the damp from the saturated brickwork was so bad. They also demanded that I re-plaster and redecorate the entire unit, even though Network Rail still needed to perform a full back-to-brick inspection that would require removing all the plaster board to gain access?

I appealed to the Arch Co’s facilities manager’s better side and asked for the dilapidations team to be made aware of the damage to the unit from decades of underinvestment by successive landlords. In my head I wrote off the £3500 deposit that I paid in 2008, while the Arch Co kept referring to the non-existent “full repair and renewal” clause in my Network Rail lease.

Then almost 1 year on, to add final insult to injury, the Arch Co have quietly added 5 Cherry Tree Walk to their website, advertising a rent that is 25% lower than they demanded from me!

Notably, they haven’t put our neighbouring unit on the market, despite the same level of re-development. I believe this has something to do with the back-to-brick inspection that was undertaken on unit 4 towards the end of our tenancy. The result of this NR inspection was inconclusive and demanded further inspection, for which NR had run out of budget.

As far as I’m aware, no inspection has been carried out on our old unit, yet the Arch Co have brought it back to market. Unit 1 and Unit 4 have both failed this inspection when NR did carry it out, proof, I believe, that shows the entire viaduct from Holbeck to Saxton is, at best, not fit for use as commercial premises. I believe Network Rail are dragging their heals on these inspections because they are aware of decades of neglect that will be unearthed. If nothing else, questions could and should be raised about tenant and rail user safety, and the current inspection regime is not fit to answer them.

Neglect by both the Arch Co and Network Rail is becoming a blight on Central Leeds. Only those properties where investment has been made have got actual tenants. The worst arches (the majority of the viaduct) have all become empty under the Arch Co’s tenure, many of them have been left to deteriorate as tenants left.

Just follow the viaduct from the Station to the East, you can’t miss the neglect: The Cockpit (empty and undeveloped for 20 years), The Shed Bar (closed last year), Mission Night Club (empty and undeveloped for 5 years), unit 1 Cherry Tree Walk (formerly Pertemps, empty and undeveloped for 4 years), Safari Night Club (empty and undeveloped for 5 years), Saffran Restaurant (empty and undeveloped for over a year): just to mention a few.

Than you for your continued support and custom.

Kind regards,

Chris Hill

Director

Latitude Wine & Liquor Merchant/ Latitude Wine Bar

PS.

One final word for anyone who is tempted to enter into a lease with the Arch Co. Network Rail sold all of their commercial property space to the Arch Co in 2018. As part of the head lease the Arch Co must now demand that any new tenants explicitly sign away their rights under the Landlord and Tenants Act of 1954. The Arch Co is now the largest landlord to small businesses in the UK and yet every single lease that has been signed since 2018 is outside the Act, an Act that was legislated to re-balance the landlord/tenant relationship and reduce monopolistic landlord abuse.

In 2016 Blackstone and Telereal Trillium formed the Arch Co, by jointly bidding for Network Rail’s commercial leases behind closed doors with the Ministry of Transport. Blackstone is a US company and the largest private real estate owner in the world. They have recently taken 100% ownership of the Arch Co. They clearly see the benefit in over 4000 commercial leases that are, by their very definition, removed from all legal obligations and oversight.