The Black Cap on Monday April 13 2015, the day its closure was announced
The Black Cap has retained the protection of Camden Council despite its owners’ attempts to dispute its community value.
The iconic LGBTQ pub and cabaret venue, a site of queer culture and community since the 1960s if not earlier, was closed without notice in April by owners Kicking Horse and operators Faucet Inn.
Four days earlier, it had been granted asset of community value (or ACV) status – a council designation that recognises a venue’s significance to the local community, restricts changes of use to the space, and gives the community the option to make a bid if the site is put up for sale.
Thanks in part to the ACV status, attempts to sell the venue and reopen the space in another guise have so far stalled. ACV status would make it very difficult for a new owner to use the site as anything other than an LGBTQ pub and performance space.
Last month, Kicking Horse and Faucet Inn applied to Camden Council to overturn the status, arguing that the first-floor Shufflewick Bar – which was used by people and groups who preferred a quieter space to the ground-floor cabaret bar – didn’t contribute to “the social wellbeing of the community”.
However, the council today rejected that claim and upheld the Cap’s ACV status, which applies to the entire building for five years from the time it was granted.
The decision follows a closed hearing yesterday, at which ACV status was defended by Camden LGBT Forum director Nigel Harris, Ben Giddins – aka Meth, a regular performer at the Black Cap and the venue’s former events producer – and Joe Parslow, a producer of shows at the pub.
“We won against some of London’s top lawyers,” Harris wrote in a Facebook post this afternoon. “Lots more to accomplish but it shows we can do it! More details tomorrow when official letter comes through.”
If the owners’ appeal had been successful, they would have found it much easier to redevelop the site or complete a sale in anticipation of the venue reopening as another kind of business.
Kicking Horse and Faucet Inn are still appealing against the council’s decision in February to reject plans to turn the Cap’s upper floors into flats – a move one councillor said would lead to the “death” of the venue.
Despite signing a contract of sale with Camden Securities LLP in December 2014, Kicking Horse remains the site’s legal owner. Camden Securities appeared to have reached an agreement with café chain The Breakfast Club to move into the space but if Kicking Horse’s sale to Camden Securities falls through, that agreement presumably becomes moot.
The Breakfast Club has come under fire over the prospective deal all the same, including criticism that the £7 million company’s description of itself as “small” is disingenuous. Its owners released a statement defending their actions.
Following the Black Cap’s closure, it was squatted by a group including former patrons of the pub. After several weeks and a couple of parties, they were eventually ejected on the basis of a court order.
Kicking Horse succeeded once before in overturning ACV status for the Black Cap. It was first granted in 2013 but there turned out to have been procedural inaccuracies in that initial submission, which was one of the first dealt with by Camden Council since the introduction of ACV in 2011. That application was not made by Camden LGBT Forum.
