It’s been a minor mystery for some time. 51 Queenstown Road was once the home of Ritz Dry Cleaners – but they closed maybe 20 years ago. Since then the shop has sat empty, keeping a rare example of a classic ‘0171’ inner London telephone number on its sign; these were replaced with 0207 numbers way back in 2000. At first someone kept the windows cleaned, but that stopped at some point and No. 51 has been getting gradually more and more buried under posters and adverts. The street around it has evolved in the decades of emptiness – losing most of its general retail, but finding a new market as it gained an ever larger number of interior design businesses, as well as seeing a bit of a growth in restaurants.

It’s always curious when this happens for so long – especially when so much potential rental income is left on the table, with rents for some of the units like this approaching £20,000 a year. We’ve seen a few cases where properties got caught up in probate issues, some where the owners own a lot of properties and have their focus elsewhere, and some where elderly owners struggle to manage their properties. Sometimes landlords are waiting for leases on other partys of buildings to end, to pave the way for bigger redevelopments. In a few (rare) cases, the owners can’t be traced at all! We don’t know what the story is in this case – although back in 2016, when Ritz Dry Cleaners had already been closed for several years, permission was given for the dry cleaners to be converted to a restaurant, which the planning documents suggest could be called Satchmo’s. It never happened, and for the following decade, the unit remained empty. The only clue we have here si that the current proposals are from the same applicant as the never-implemented 2016 plans – Mr Elliot Moss.

But now new plans have emerged to redevelop the building – and refurbish the shopfront to a condition where it can again be let out. The image above shows what’s planned – which includes a new shopfront that is a bit more consistent with its neighbours, but otherwise doesn’t make all that many changes. On the inside of the shop, not a lot will change – but a slight reshaping of the shop unit will make a more efficient use of the space. The plans also include a general reorganising and sorting out of the rest of the building, including a small ground floor extension at the back that will allow the existing flat behind it to be converted to a more open-plan and efficient layout, and a mansard extension to convert the currently-unused loft to an en suite bedroom, similar to what has already been done in some of No. 51’s neighbours – accompanied by a barely noticeable increase to the roof level. None of this looks to be controversial; at the time of writing there are unrsurprisingly no comments on the proposals. Fingers crossed these works will lead to this long-vacant retail unit, which has frankly become a bit of en eyesore, come back in to use.

If you want to see or comment on the detailed plans for 51 Queenstown Road SW8 3RG, they’re at wandsworth.gov.uk/planning, search for case 2025/0402. If you’re interested in obscure local property news in and around Lavender Hill in Battersea you could do worse than see our other articles on planning and development issues. 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.