South Queensferry bakery could be left out of pocket for £70k after council reverse lease decision
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A South Queensferry business owner could be left out of pocket for tens of thousands of pounds after a proposed lease on a unit in the town was pulled.
Lewis Gill, who owns Dune Bakery in South Queensferry, told the Edinburgh Evening News how a last minute change from Edinburgh City Council could cost him and his business up to £70,000.
Mr Gill had been set to take over Unit 31, The Loan - having agreed a lease £4,000 over the council’s asking price, with an entry date of 27 October.
However, when the lease due to be signed on 23 October, Edinburgh Council said that they were now not proceeding with the lease and that the unit would be kept for “archives”.
The project would have given a second location to the popular bakery in South Queensferry, which recently placed second the Isigny Ste Mere croissant competition at the Savoy in London.
£20,000 had already been sunk into the project through legal costs and a further £50,000 had been earmarked for contractors that were set to work on revamping the unit - a cost that will need to be incurred by either Mr Gill or the contractors who had set three months aside for the work.
Mr Gill said: “It's £20,000 that we've paid already, and then the rest, basically either we have to eat it, or our contractors have to eat it. So it's one of us, but either way it is absolutely huge.
“We're a small business. It's just a small unit where we employ 13 people. But £70,000 is a couple of people's wages for the full year. and this was side marked for this, in the knowledge that we would hopefully be able to recoup it by having two places.
“So now if this doesn't go through, we're gonna have to have to make this back just off the one unit. It's gonna be pretty difficult.”
It was expected that the project to upgrade the council owned building would have seen investment of around £200,000, plus rent of £600,000 over a 20 year lease. However, Mr Gill has been left frustrated by a process which he said hampers small businesses like his.
He said: “It's not like a normal lease where you get into contact with the landlord, you would agree on the rent that they have put out there, and then that's it and you just work towards that.
“[With the council] You have to bid. I spent time on that. These processes take quite a long time. But when you've got someone who's out of office for four days of the week it slows things down. It just seems like total incompetence. And I mean it just hinders small businesses.”
Mr Gill said the ambition from the business was to have a positive impact on the local community that he has now moved into after living and owning businesses in Leith.
“I was still living in Leith, but then after we'd operated here for nine months, I really wanted to live out here, it's a lot different to being in the city centre. You're really spoiled in the city center for loads of different options of things. And I was like let's try and bring some more to South Queensferry. Let's try and get a little market going. I was just like, ‘right, let's, let's just take everything we've made in the last year, plus a bit more, and just pump it into the community’. Because everyone's really nice out here. I've had places in town where people hate a bit of change, but out here, everyone's really welcoming to it.”
“I really like the community out here, and I thought it'd be really cool to set something up like this. And I explained that when I put my proposal forward to the council what it was we wanted to do for the community, charity runs and things like that. I think it's just ridiculously short sighted. I mean, what are they bringing to the community by having it as an archive?”
A Council spokesperson said: “We’re grateful to the Dune Bakery for their interest in leasing this space and are sorry we’re not able to take this forward. We’ve written to the business to apologise and explain – and have offered to cover the costs they’ve incurred to date.”