The Party Superstore is one of the most well known shops on Lavender Hill. It’s been trading for thirty years – since 1994! – and gained a certain fame when it was completely destroyed in a major arson attack in the London riots in 2011, costing its owner Duncan Mundell over £200,000 – but bounced back to reopen just six weeks later in space lent by Debenhams next door, and then finally reopened in the original shop two years later after a full rebuild, bigger and brighter than ever. It has a huge range, over two floors and spreading over what were once four separate shopfronts – and sometimes sees quite impressive queues before key fancy dress times of the year.

However we’ve spotted a mysterious planning application that suggests change may be afoot. Application 2024/4363 went in not long before Christmas, proposing the “change of use of 270 Lavender Hill from a fancy dress shop to a pizza restaurant” with the installation of a new shop front and of a new roof lantern to rear flat roof. It also proposed the installation of a new extraction duct to the rear elevation, presumably to serve a kitchen. The further details needed to get a planning consultation going were never provided, so it’s not clear if this covers the whole of the Party Superstore site (which was originally four units and so goes much wider than just No.270), or just that section of it.

There are some clues though. The application was by Mr Godfrey Russell, who may be the same Godfrey Russell who was property director of Revolution Bars Group for two decades before becoming group property director at a company called Mission Mars. And the agent for the application is Design306, who are also involved in other Project Mars developments.

Mission Mars are a Manchester-based group in the food and drink sector, they created Albert’s Schloss (a set of four Bavarian beer halls serving “Europe’s best tankards of bier, Alpine plates and seven days of showtime”) and Rudy’s Pizza (a small chain specialising in Neapolitan pizza, with thirty branches, including seven in London, who have been expanding rapidly and sold over two million pizzas a year). If our speculation is right this proposal may therefore be for a new branch of Rudy’s Pizza, whose core product is classic Italian pizzas made with fresh dough in a Neapolitan-style base with a variety of toppings, including vegan and vegetarian options. Their Soho branch is pictured below.

It’s an obvious location for Rudy’s Pizza – a decent sized unit right in the middle of a busy town centre, and one that seems to have a fairly insatiable appetite for Neapolitan pizza if the experience of our other traders (including highly-rated and ever popular Pizza Pellone at the other end of Lavender Hill) is anything to go by.

Rather mysteriously, the application for a change of use has now timed out without ever going live. This can mean many things – sometimes it’s because particular documents needed as part of applications weren’t supplied in time, sometimes it’s because plans changed and no-one needed to follow through. Nothing seems to be happening any time soon – so those working at the party superstore shouldn’t panic. However this may mean a change for one of our longest-established traders, and we’ll keep you posted if this develops further.

Update (April 2025) – the plans are still not out for consultation, though we hear that the proposal may well (as we slightly suspected based on the way the address was described) only apply to one side of the party store. So this might mean a reduction in the size of the shop, but this is not the end of the business.

Party and Celebrate (previously called the Party Superstore) is at 268-274 Lavender Hill, London SW11 1LJ. We post from time to time on retail developments in the Lavender Hill area of Battersea, London – if you found this of interest you may want to see our other recent posts on retail and on food and drink in the area, or to sign up to receive new posts by email.