Examination of Witnesses (Questions 200
- 219)
TUESDAY 31 MARCH 2009
CLLR MELVYN
TEARE AND
CLLR ROBIN
BOWEN-WILLIAMS
Q200 Sir Paul Beresford: What is
it costing your council?
Cllr Bowen-Williams: It has not
yet fallen into a negative quantity but I think it will by the
end of this year. We pay the national non-domestic business rate
on the site, which is why I personally have been very interested
to read the Knaresborough Market decision by the Lands Tribunal,
which has determined that the rent on markets should be determined
at 20 per cent of the rent passing and not on square footage which
might be perceived in law as being available for the market.
Q201 Chair: Councillor Bowen-Williams,
we do not want to get into that level of detail. We accept that
there is £35,000 of income, as it says in the information
that you have provided. How much money does the town council put
in on a yearly basis?
Cllr Bowen-Williams: I am quite
surprised that the figures which were sent for 2008-09 come down
to £13,000 up to the end of January.
Q202 Chair: How much money does the
town council put in?
Cllr Bowen-Williams: In 2006-07
we took about £45,000.
Q203 Chair: How much do you put in?
What is the expenditure? We know what the income is.
Cllr Bowen-Williams: That is what
I am trying to move towards. I would say in very general terms
it is £35,000 in the year in profit.
Q204 Chair: We have not actually
got the answer. Do you mean £35,000 profit?
Cllr Bowen-Williams: No.
Q205 Chair: What is the expenditure?
Cllr Bowen-Williams: Call that
£10,000. It is £6,000 in the following year and in 2008-09
it will, I am quite sure, end up not making a profit.
Q206 David Wright: Are there any
other non-council streams of funding that you have looked at to
support the market? Do you solely support it? What other organisations
potentially are putting cash into the market? Have you looked
at those options?
Cllr Bowen-Williams: No. I would
agree that that is something we have not explored.
Q207 David Wright: I think many people
see the markets as a focal point for partnership working. Do you
use them in that way? Do you try and build on partnership working
locally through the work with the market?
Cllr Bowen-Williams: I suppose
I have just touched on that in the sense of starting this relationship
with the actual marketers. Forget farmers' markets for Bletchley
for all the sorts of reasons we have touched on. I think Bletchley
is referred to in a modern argot as a "UB40" area. The
footfall is falling anyway and the town is now poor. Equally,
there are an ever increasing number of cheaper stores in the area
which are attracting trade.
Cllr Teare: Certainly the partnership
working as I see it is with the 161 traders. They are small businesses
in their own right. We are providing a space and an opportunity
for them to be able to trade. With the full-time officers that
we have working purely on markets, they are working with these
people in order to ensure that the offer that we have within the
city is attractive and increases footfall.
Q208 David Wright: What are you doing
to develop your markets?
Cllr Teare: We are looking at
how we can invest better in our infrastructure in terms of the
stalls themselves.
Q209 David Wright: How much are you
spending on that?
Cllr Teare: We have allocated
£50,000 in terms of capital expenditure to look at how we
can improve that. We maintain the infrastructure as we put it
out on a weekly basis anyway. There is time allocated to a group
of people who repair and mend covers and boards and various things
like that. Not only do we operate with the Saturday and Wednesday
street market, we operate farmers' markets as well and we attract
in continental markets. The whole notion is about increasing footfall
within the city centre to the benefit of the retailers who have
fixed positions in the shops.
Q210 Sir Paul Beresford: What is
the balance between your capital and revenue input and what you
get back out of it?
Cllr Teare: The amount of money
that we generate—and we are always looking to try and make
a surplus because we run it as a business—is £650,000
a year. We are looking to make a surplus in the region of about
£100,000 on the operation of markets within the city centre
and within the district.
Q211 Sir Paul Beresford: Is that
surplus over your capital and revenue investment?
Cllr Teare: That is surplus on
the capital and revenue expenditure.
Q212 Sir Paul Beresford: What do
you do with the profits?
Cllr Teare: That profit goes back
into a general fund.
Q213 David Wright: Councillor Teare,
you were implying that your markets are growing, they are successful.
Are they in moderate decline due to the recession? How do you
cope with that if they are?
Cllr Teare: I am not saying they
are growing but they are not declining. We work very hard in order
to maintain the numbers on the particular markets.
Q214 David Wright: What work do you
do to do that?
Cllr Teare: We have a permanent
group of people who come in week in, week out, but we also have
a facility to offer stalls to people who come on a casual basis.
If you look at our Saturday market with 161 stalls, there are
people who are working during the week in full-time jobs that
choose to use a Saturday market to create some additional money
by coming in, opening up a market stall and marketing a particular
product. Be it chilli sauces or whatever, they are marketing that
product. What we have seen over the years is that people who have
developed their Saturday stall have then gone part-time working
and come on to a Wednesday stall. They also go and work at other
markets in other market towns within the vicinity.
Q215 David Wright: And you have had
to lower your price on those one-off stalls over the last 12 months
or have you kept them steady?
Cllr Teare: For the first time,
from 1 April we are not increasing the amount of money, but we
are probably one of the most expensive markets certainly in the
south of England. We charge £47.50 for a 10-foot stall.
Q216 Chair: Is that your Saturday
price?
Cllr Teare: That is our Saturday
price.
Q217 Chair: What about the Wednesday
market, which I believe is less successful than the Saturday one?
Cllr Teare: The Saturday price
is £47 and the Wednesday price is £37.50. Our farmers'
market price for the same stall is £30. I was city centre
manager for St Albans prior to being elected five years ago and
created the farmers' market within St Albans. One of the things
I wanted them to do was to look after their own refuse and waste,
which they did and so that means we can charge less for a farmers'
market because they have learned how to take their waste away
with them.
Q218 Sir Paul Beresford: Do you subsidise
the farmers' market?
Cllr Teare: No. It makes a profit.
Q219 Sir Paul Beresford: What do
you both do to promote your markets?
Cllr Teare: We do advertising
in the local press, but a lot of it is very much by word of mouth.
With the farmers' market on a Sunday, it operates between nine
and two, we get a footfall of around about 16,000 people and it
is very much through word of mouth. People come because they enjoy
the experience. We have transferred our farmers' market from St
Albans to one of our villages, Wheathampstead, and it has also
gone into one of our towns, Harpenden. There is a circuit that
the farmers' market market traders go on in terms of the month
and so when a person at Wheathampstead says, "I would like
to buy these products. Where can I buy them next?" they are
told in St Albans, Bedford, Leighton Buzzard or somewhere else.
The customers follow the trader.
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