Now the suitmaker to Winston Churchill has stitched up a deal with its landlord to remain on the street after a campaign led by Westminster council to protect the area’s heritage. The tailor will remain in place for at least another 15 years after signing a new lease with the Pollen Estate, an important landlord on Savile Row.

At least one of the ten other bespoke tailors operating in Savile Row is already in negotiations on a new lease for workshops on the street.

Westminster City Council put pressure on Savile Row’s landlords to devise ways to retain tailors. Many of the tailors, some of which have operated in Savile Row since the 1800s, are threatened by rent rises of an average 57 per cent since 1995, as their leases come to an end next year.

The Pollen Estate was keen to bring in more designer stores, global brands and modern offices that could afford higher rents. The bespoke tailors on Savile Row feared that the creeping introduction of high-street brands would dilute the street’s appeal by flooding it with cheaper fashions made overseas and so banded together to fight against the plans and won backing from Westminster City Council.

The council produced a report indicating that the bespoke tailors of Savile Row were a key part of London’s heritage and should be protected. The council also set up a working group to help to come up with practical solutions to support the tailors.

Angus Cundy, managing director of Henry Poole & Co, said: “We have been here for 180 years and have always made on the premises. A Savile Row suit should be made in Savile Row.” He said that without the agreement Henry Poole would have been forced to move away from Savile Row and the property would have been subject to redevelopment.

Henry Poole & Co agreed to move its tailoring workshops from the second and third floors of its store at No 15 Savile Row into the basements of that building and No 16 next door.

The Pollen Estate intends to redevelop No 15’s upper floors as office space. The tailor has agreed a 30 per cent rise in rent, having just completed a 25-year lease, but Mr Cundy said that that was considerably more affordable than the previously expected 50 per cent increase.

Mike Jones, of Drivers Jonas, the property adviser to the Pollen Estate, said: “We are delighted with this news. It is fully in line with the estate’s strategy for the row of consolidating tailoring in the lower floors from the upper floors.”

The Pollen Estate has also committed £50,000 to support the training of new tailors and to improve the public spaces on the street.

SUITS YOU, SIR (AND MA’AM)

The clients of Henry Poole:

1846 Prince Napoleon Louis Buonaparte (later Emperor of France)

1858 Emperor Napoleon III

1860 HRH Prince of Wales (King Edward VII)

1860 Prince Nicholas Troubitzkoy

1860 Grand Duc Michel of Russia

1860 Wm Claridge of Claridges Hotel

1861 Charles Dickens

1863 HRH Prince Humbert (Later King of Italy)

1865 Queen Victoria

1926 Sir Winston Churchill

1937 J.P. Morgan of JP Morgan bank

1943 General Charles de Gaulle

1946 Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia

1951 Duke of Windsor

1976 The Queen

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