Rent hikes, VHS tapes and a controversial screening of Jaws: Inside the fight over Toxteth TV

Truth be told, when Andy Johnson arrived at his long-time workplace, Toxteth TV, one Thursday in April last year, he was already dreaming of the coming weekend. It was Easter, which meant Friday off, and after a stressful few weeks he was looking forward to a long weekend with his wife and children. He wanted to put all the recent drama behind him — at least for 72 hours. There was just today to get through first. Johnson still didn’t know how he was going to reply to the board’s most recent email — the one that accused him of “gaslight[ing]”. 

He shook his head to clear the thought — coffee first, then log onto his computer to organise his messages. But when Andy put his key into the lock of his green room, located just off his TV studio space in the building, it wouldn’t turn. He tried a second time, then again. “Why isn’t it working?” he thought. Then, a sense of dread began to rise through his body. The locks had been changed, Johnson realised. He’d been physically shut out of the space he’d been leasing for nearly a decade.

Andy Johnson is on one side of a struggle that’s been dividing the tenants of a modest arts space in L8. For over two decades, Toxteth TV has provided a home for dozens of creative arts organisations across Liverpool, from local broadcasters like Bay TV, to community companies such as 20 Stories High and Liverpool Hip Hop Festival. Johnson’s TV and film venture, Next Chapter Media, has been based there since 2018.

But not any more, not since the appointment of a new tenant-led board. Created in 2024 to save Toxteth TV, the board set about making big changes to ensure the long-term survival of the space. But Johnson says rather than support his company, these changes have seen him become the “target” of “a campaign of harassment” that’s culminated in him losing £15,000 of business, and eventually being evicted from the building. Now, he’s taking them to court. 

The board takes a different view. In emails seen by The Post, they suggest Johnson is an obstructor, refusing to cooperate with them to ensure Toxteth TV’s future, and leaving them with little choice but to take extreme measures to eject him. The fallout has created such a “toxic” environment that two organisations have moved out — with more considering leaving. “It’s been a shock to everyone,” one tenant, who runs another company in the building, tells us. “There desperately needs to be a cooling down”.

‘A power to the people moment’

Two years ago Toxteth TV was in ill health. The organisation — launched in the early 2000s to provide creative opportunities and media training in L8 — found itself on the brink of financial collapse, unable to afford repair works needed to maintain the building. Unhappy with years of what they saw as poor financial management by its board, a group of long-standing tenants — headed by Capoeira For All co-founder Akil Morgan and game designer Jon Weatherall — created a Tenants Association. The new body promised to represent the needs of the roughly 18 businesses across the building, and ensure that much-needed rent increases were distributed fairly.

At Toxteth TV’s AGM in September that year, six members of the Tenants Association were elected to replace the current board — Morgan and Weatherall were both chosen, alongside Nikki Hayden from Liverpool’s Hip Hop Festival, Cinema Nation’s Michael Pearce, potter Attila Ollah and Denise Snape from the Gluten Free Pie Company. “It felt like a power to the people moment,” Johnson says. While he didn’t necessarily have close friendships with those elected — he describes his relationship with Weatherall as someone “he would say hello to but not send a Christmas card to” — he supported the notion of tenants having more input on the building and its future.