Bingley Market has been struggling. Despite the location in the fine new square, the market has suffered from the lack of footfall in the town. And from Bradford Council's lack of interest in the market - indeed in the idea of markets as a permanent feature of a town rather than as a flashy gimmick for a festival day.
Some business folk in Bingley would like to take on the market - give it a real boost and try to make it work free from the attentions of council busybodies:
Richard Holmes, who manages the 5Rise shopping centre, design firm boss Richard Tempest and market trader Dean McNally had proposed running the setting-up of stalls and collecting of rents themselves as a means of securing the market’s future and saving the Council some £40,000 a year in costs
Great news surely? Local people keen to take control of a local facility and save the Council some brass? The Council have bitten these business folk's hands off? Er..no:
‘Any relinquishing of the market operation would require a Council decision and would have to go out to tender rather than just handing the operation of the market to just one group’
What nonsense - the Council has no absolute requirement to put business of this sort out to tender merely to have identified particular reasons why not and to have explained how the market has been tested.
It seems the Council would prefer to see the market die a slow death rather than respond to a positive offer from local traders. Pretty typical. And rather sad.
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