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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 308-iii House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE COMMUNITIES AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT committee
MR MICHAEL FELTON and MR JONATHAN OWEN CLLR MELVYN TEARE and CLLR ROBIN BOWEN-WILLIAMS MR STEPHEN DOUGLASS, MR CHRIS WROE and MS TOT BRILL Evidence heard in Public Questions 164 - 261
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Communities and Local Government Committee on Members present Dr Phyllis Starkey, in the Chair Sir Paul Beresford Mr Clive Betts John Cummings David Wright ________________ Memoranda submitted by Michael Felton Associates and Quarterbridge
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Mr Michael Felton, Michael Felton Associates, and Mr Jonathan Owen, Quarterbridge, gave evidence. Q164 Chair: Good morning. We have a lot of witnesses to get through this morning so do not feel obliged to repeat things that the other witness may have said if you agree with each other, if you could focus on the areas of disagreement. Both of you seem to be quite pessimistic about the future of markets. Could you briefly say why you think markets are in decline and if you think there is a difference between different types of market and their future prospects? Mr Owen: Fundamentally the markets are in decline because of increased retail competition and retail consolidation and a lack of capital investment and improvements by market owners, who are primarily local authorities. Q165 Chair: Do you agree with that, Mr Felton? Mr Felton: I agree with what Jonathan has just said but I think it is also the case that the incoming number of traders has declined quite a lot over the past years. Young people do not wish to follow their parents in their occupations. They see better chances and a better form of livelihood outside the markets. If you go around most of the markets in this country you will see the traders are getting older and older and older. The excessive competition that Jonathan has already mentioned is across the board entirely. Many of the discounters and supermarkets are selling non-food products and that seems to be spreading, which hurts the market traders and clothing and footwear particularly very much. Q166 Chair: Some of the markets we have seen do provide an outlet for traders who are meeting the needs of the more diverse communities that have moved into areas. Do your views about a lack of new traders apply across the board or not in some areas? Mr Felton: I would say it applies almost across the board. It is difficult to say exactly why it does, but that is the experience of going round the countryside, the intake is simply not there. There is also a question of lack of capital that seems to continue and capital support, overdrafts and things. Q167 Sir Paul Beresford: You have both mentioned a lack of capital from the owners, which you said are predominantly local government. Local government is under pressure too. Why should they invest more capital in what you say is a dying market? Mr Owen: I think it is fundamental to any business, if you want to maintain your competitive edge, that you have got to reinvest constantly in your business. Unfortunately, in my experience most local authorities have treated their market services as a cash can over the last 30 or 40-odd years. They have not got a structured reinvestment policy into their service, they have not got the capital investment in there and as a result the competition, which plays by a different set of rules, which have been investing heavily, which have been borrowing and investing and improving the product and their attractiveness to their customers, have overtaken them. Q168 Sir Paul Beresford: You sound so pessimistic. Why would they invest if they got nothing out of it? Are they going to get anything out of it? Mr Owen: I think there are a lack of business skills often amongst local authorities and a lack of a commercial approach towards evaluating the options that are open to them. From a commercial point of view, I am always looking for a return on capital invested. From a local authority's point of view, often they regard the market service as being more of a community provision or something that we have always done. There has been a lack of focus in terms of why many local authorities are actually providing the markets. Mr Felton: I think the question you have just put strikes at the heart of the need for a market. The question is perhaps why does one need a market? Why should one continue to support it? There is a great deal of community cohesion that is needed in this country, especially in the small towns. It is a great provider of direct and indirect employment and it is also an earner in most circumstances for the local authority. Markets are here traditionally. I am not saying that tradition is written in stone, it certainly is not, but without some markets in those smaller towns, perhaps on a Wednesday or a Saturday or one day a week, those towns would be very much poorer without it. Q169 Chair: The point that you have just made seems to apply specifically to small countryside communities. Do those arguments equally apply in cities? Mr Felton: Yes. I have already said in my submission that the Saturday market in a small town, large village or whatever with a population of 8,000-15,000 is at risk. Unfortunately from a market point of view, people will go elsewhere for their principal shopping. The key number of food suppliers within markets is falling. It is my view - and it has been for some years - that a market without a greengrocer is not a market. One can see going round the markets that where there used to be two greengrocers there is now one and very often the produce simply cannot compete with the nearby supermarket on the edge of the town. Q170 Sir Paul Beresford: What markets are succeeding? Farmers' markets? Mr Owen: I think farmers' markets, specialist markets are succeeding, but it is not day-to-day essentials which they are selling. The prices on most farmers' markets are considerably higher than on what I would call a general regular market. They are a destination, a leisure activity on a Saturday once a month or a Sunday once a month. They are not providing day-to-day necessities for most household shoppers. Q171 David Wright: Are the spin-offs for mainstream markets that come from specialist markets being in the same area? Are there examples where you get a specialist market that ties into another market and boosts trade maybe once a month? What are the spin-offs? Mr Owen: Certainly part of a strategy to run a successful market service if you are a local authority is you need to recognise that a specialist market will not provide the day-to-day shopping, because of the prices and the periodic nature of the farmers' market, but they are very useful to complement and to increase footfall at specific times of the year and to increase awareness of the fact that there is a general market there for the remaining four or five days of the week. Mr Felton: I agree with Jonathan that the question of increased footfall is absolutely critical. One particular light on the farmers' market is that they make no profits for the local authority as such, they are all heavily subsidised. I am currently engaged with a medium-size town project and having analysed the figures for costs, income and various expenses for the farmers' market, it has been carried out at an enormous subsidy, thousands of pounds annually. One wonders if there is a point at which local politicians will say enough is enough. Whether they continue to have to subsidise it is of course their choice. Q172 John Cummings: How do you account for the huge success of continental markets which are now appearing on a very regular basis in huge shopping centres? Mr Felton: Continental markets have
their own particular uniqueness. They
are very popular. They are very
successful. Again the local authority
tends to subsidise them by charging a relatively low rent but paying for
substantial advertising costs and for supplying things like electricity and
water. The continental attitude to
markets is of course quite different from what there is in the Q173 John Cummings: Are you saying that local authorities subsidise continental markets in private shopping centres? Mr Felton: Yes. John Cummings: I am referring to the area in which I live where brand new shopping centres now encourage continental markets to come into their premises with no involvement at all from the local authorities. I am not quite sure what you are referring to. Q174 Chair: Are you suggesting that continental markets and farmers' markets are used as a kind of loss leader either by shopping centre management or by local authorities to bring people into a shopping centre? Mr Owen: Absolutely. There are one or two of the better continental market operators, I will not mention names, who will be quite clear and quite open with you and they will say, "I am not going to 'Mudthorpe on Sea' unless I am paid £X thousand by the local authority to stand there." On the other hand, if they were offered a prime pitch in the middle of an extremely vibrant town then they would pay a rent to the local authority to go there. The problem is that there are relatively few what I would call quality continental market operators. It can be a perfectly justifiable decision to subsidise continental markets to come into your town centre, possibly as part of a town centre promotion or events programme, to increase footfall in the town centre and that is a perfectly legitimate use of taxpayers' money if it is voted through the council in that way. There is a recognition at the same time that continental and specialist markets generally speaking do not make money for local authorities. Mr Felton: To some extent I would regard the continental market as an annual or biannual star turn. They are very attractive. People come from a long way away or outside of the normal catchment areas and enjoy themselves as do the traders. They catch the headlines. Good luck to them! That is fine. Q175 David Wright: One of the drivers behind farmers' markets in particular is the promotion of local produce. If you are using a farmers' market in that way to promote local suppliers is it not a problem for market traders generally because does that not send the message out that your normal market does not do this? It is an open question. I am trying to understand how you would combine the two. Mr Owen: There is a tension between open market traders and indoor market hall traders. There is another tension between open market traders and continental markets. They are turning up on the best days and saying, "They've been given the best days. They're pinching all of our business." There is a friction between them and farmers' markets whereby they say, "I don't know why the council is bothering doing that. They are giving that space to them at a concessionary rent which they do not give to us who are paying the day-to-day bills for the council." There are three or four completely different businesses there and you have to understand the drivers behind each one of them. The drivers behind continental markets is the guy out there who is making a living by delivering to a council a dozen or two dozen or whatever it is specialist users and his revenue comes from either the subsidy, which effectively he is paid by the local authority, or the money which he derives from his traders. They are completely distinct things. The market is this single word which encompasses a range of different types of business. Mr Felton: If I may say so, I think to
some extent we may be misleading ourselves by concentrating on these so-called
specialist markets. My main concern is
the smaller market town and the smaller open street market. These are the ones which I see in distinct
danger and are still currently very much in decline. Large markets, particularly in the north-west
and north-east and the Q176 John Cummings: Can you tell the Committee what you believe local authorities should be doing to promote and ensure the survival of the markets? Mr Felton: I think the short answer is pay up. Q177 John Cummings: Pay up what? Mr Felton: For investment. One of the difficulties with a small town is that you do not get local management. You do not get one officer in charge of the market. Those who are in charge of markets are often multi-functional; they have more than one thing to do during the week. It needs dedication, it needs a proper approach to things like publicity and it means the obtaining of new traders, sorting out the market and getting the right type of person to run it. This is a local authority problem. It depends upon the political will to some extent or the will of the permanent officers to keep it going. It is lower down on the priority of a town council or district council in many cases. Mr Owen: I would certainly endorse that. In my experience local authority officers are very well intentioned, a lot of them are extremely dedicated and they are doing a very tough job, but in this particular instance they are up against commercial pressures which, quite frankly, often they are not trained to respond to. Local authorities are generally very good at regulating situations but rather poor at exploiting business opportunities. In this particular instance, running a market is like running a commercial operation where you are in direct competition with the private sector and you have to adopt the same techniques, whether it is reinvestment or training and management skills or promotion, and unfortunately they are falling down on that. Q178 John Cummings: What do you believe local authorities should be learning from the private sector in running successful markets? You are being quite specific and very damning of local authorities. Give me some examples of highly successful private markets. What can we learn from them? Mr Owen: The first priority is whether or not you can get past the budgetary pressures on a local authority which enables it to promote the market. Q179 John Cummings: Assuming that they have passed all of those hurdles, what can local authorities learn from the private sector? Mr Felton: There has been an increasing trend over the past eight or ten years for some of the smaller local authorities that have one or two markets within their jurisdiction to outsource it, to privatise it, that is why they are called private markets. They will then let it on a short-term licence, a three-year licence or a short lease to what is known as a private operator. The difference there is quite considerable because a private operator is driven by the profit motive and in order to get the required profit he has got to run a decent market that actually makes sense. Q180 John Cummings: Can you give me some examples of these, please? You are being very specific in damning local authorities for the way in which they operate the markets. I am asking for some specific examples of where the private markets have been more successful in their operation. Mr Felton: One I can immediately think
of is in Congleton in the north which is let out to a well known private market
operator, which is successful, so much so that the local authority has let it
out for quite some while. I think there
is also one in Q181 John Cummings: What have they done? What makes them successful? What examples can you give the Committee? Mr Felton: I am not trying to hedge it. You are throwing questions at us which are perfectly proper. They are successful because they have a dedicated man known as a "toby" in charge of the market who is employed by a private operator. He probably works something like five markets a week, moving from place to place. His sole occupation in life is to set up a market, get it advertised, get the traders in, interest the public and get the thing working, and for that he gets a salary and a bonus depending upon turnover. If you contrast that with the local authority, where in many cases local authorities, the hierarchy, have so many interested in the performance or non-performance of the market, it turns out to be quite different. It is simply a commercial approach. Additionally, what may appear to be a small matter but I consider quite important is the question of publicity. A private operator will spend a lot more on publicity to get the people and the traders in than the local authority. Q182 Chair: You mentioned a private market in Congleton and Waverley. Where is Waverley? Mr Felton: Q183 Chair: Are these quite affluent communities? Mr Felton: Congleton is perhaps
not. The one in Q184 Chair: What sort of market are they? Do they have the greengrocers which we would think of as a traditional part of a traditional market or have they gone more to the craft, upmarket end? Mr Felton: No, it is a generalised market. They will have greengrocers and cheese vendors and sell bread and things like that. Q185 John Cummings: Are you saying that the private operators focus more on short-term financial gain rather than on the wider community benefits of markets? Mr Owen: I would say that is almost inevitable, yes. The first priority of any private market operator is to secure a reasonable return to enable him to pay the rent or the partnership fee or whatever to the local authority. The second tranche of his income he would be prepared to share with the local authority. The issues of social provision, of having relatively low rents for the stalls in order to attract more traders, are of less importance to him than actual cashflow. I believe there are some local authorities where there is an agreement between members that they will not 'rinse' the market for every penny that they can get out of it in order to make social provision for people in less affluent areas. There is an understanding rather than a written statement of policy often amongst members that this is the way that the market will be run. That is a perfectly legitimate political decision to make according to the particular circumstances. Q186 John Cummings: How do you believe the marketing and the promotion of markets could be improved? Mr Felton: The promotion of them by local authorities certainly needs improving. It is no use putting a weekly or monthly advert in the local paper which never changes, it is always in the same position and tells you absolutely nothing, there has to be a change of direction as to how markets can be improved. I have a list of techniques that one would advise clients on to improve their market, obvious things like leafleting, special lottery draws, special days for old age pensioners, et cetera, et cetera, and this is never exploited by local authorities. Q187 John Cummings: Is it exploited by the market traders themselves? Mr Felton: No. Traders are individual characters and they are only concerned with their own trade and not necessarily the chap that is selling something next door to them. Q188 John Cummings: Have they got no interest in making sure that the market they are attending is actively promoted themselves? Mr Owen: No. With all due respect to market traders, a lot of them are remarkably poor at promoting their own businesses. They take the fact that there is going to be a market there as an assumption and they assume that the £5 a week levy or whatever it is that they pay towards advertising and promoting that market is sufficient. If you were a private retailer you would be ring-fencing a significant proportion of your gross receipts in order to reinvest in your business and promote your business and develop your business. They do not, generally speaking, do that. They regard the rather feeble efforts of local authorities to promote the markets as being sufficient to promote their own businesses and that is a failure on the part of the traders as much as a failure of the councils to ring-fence a proportion of the monies. Q189 John Cummings: Is it not a matter of better co-operation between market traders and the council to promote a specific market? With council owned shops in a retail centre, to a large degree those shops are responsible for advertising their wares. Ought not the same principle to be applied to market traders? Mr Owen: It could be applied by all means, but you have to bear in mind that if we are talking about open markets, effectively a market trader is in the nicest sense of the word itinerant, they move from market to market, they owe no loyalty to any particular market, their loyalty is to their profitability. They will move to wherever they feel that the management has enough nouse to promote the market. You cannot under-estimate the importance of stimulating what I call investor confidence amongst the traders that you have got a market manager who knows how to play the game, who knows how to promote the market and who knows how to go out and find new traders. The issue is very complex. The theory is fine. Yes, the traders should be working with the management to promote the market. In reality, they should be working harder to promote themselves first and then the market and the market manager should be relying on his own efforts. Q190 Chair: You are talking about the good local authorities. Does it make a difference if they have a town centre manager, for example, who is also responsible for markets? Mr Felton: Yes. The stage has been reached where I think there is a difference. The retail market allowance has recently been set up. The Association of Town Centre Managers is one of the constituent bodies along with the National Association of British Market Authorities and the National Market Traders Federation. This is starting to make a difference. This certainly means much more co-operation with a town centre manager who is now almost urged to play it as part of his jurisdiction. Q191 David Wright: Could you quickly tell us about the impact in terms of wholesalers? Obviously large supermarket chains are potentially undermining the ability of traders to purchase what they need from wholesalers. Could you tell us what the impact of that is? Mr Owen: Several of the traders I have
discussed this issue with are having trouble buying because the wholesale chain
has shrunk to such an extent they are finding it difficult. One of the more successful traders that I
know in January/February goes off to the Far East and he buys his product
directly from the factory, he does not wait for the wholesale chain in the Q192 Chair: Is that a clothing store? Mr Owen: No, it is electronics actually. Mr Felton: The average small trader
simply does not have the capital behind him or the means to ascertain where he
can re-supply his own goods at a price that he can afford. He does not have the money to buy in quantity
and has nowhere to store it. These people
are often living and working from a flat or a home and they have got to keep the
stuff somewhere, so they cannot buy much in advance. The medium-size wholesalers that still exist
will give generous discounts but you have got to purchase several thousand
pounds-worth at a time. That is not
always possible for a lot of the average traders that are still around. Mr Cummings was asking about examples of
markets. Certainly at Rushmore, which is
the Aldershot area, Chichester, Farnham and Q193 Sir Paul Beresford: Could you give quick thoughts to legislation and regulation? We have had complaints, for example, about the London Local Authorities Act. What changes would you suggest? Mr Owen: I was sitting yesterday morning
with the highways officer and the legal officer of a certain Q194 Sir Paul Beresford: Would you be able to write to us and tell us what changes you think should be brought in? Mr Owen: Certainly. Mr Felton: I certainly recollect, as a member of what was called the Association of Private Operators, that we had an interview with Angela Rumbold, who was then a junior minister at the Home Office, when the London Local Authorities Act was being drafted. We made a number of suggestions and she explained to us very nicely the difficulties in getting it absolutely right. We pointed out to her that some of these provisions simply would not be fair nor work effectively and it turned out that we happened to be right. Q195 Chair: Mr Owen, if you could send us a note afterwards with very specific ways in which you think it should be changed that would be very helpful. Mr Owen: Certainly. I will do that. Chair: Thank you very much. Memoranda submitted by St Albans District Council and Bletchley & Fenny
Examination of Witnesses Witnesses: Cllr Melvyn Teare, portfolio holder for Culture and Heritage, St Albans District Council, and Cllr Robin Bowen-Williams, Chair of Finance and General Purposes Committee, Bletchley & Fenny Stratford Town Council, gave evidence. Q196 Chair: May I welcome both of you. Can I ask that in your responses to questions you try and concentrate on the experience of your own market rather than generalising because we have had lots of other witnesses who have talked about markets generally. I think what we are hoping to do in this session is to explore your lessons from your own particular markets rather than any kind of general ones. Do you believe your market is thriving or in decline, and why it is either thriving or in decline? Cllr Teare: I believe our market is
actually thriving. It is a local
authority run market. It consists of a
Saturday market, which has up to 171 stalls, and a Wednesday market, which has
up to 141 stalls. It is a street market
which operates on our primary frontage within Q197 Chair: There is no need for both of you to repeat stuff which is in the written submissions because we know that. I think we are more interested in teasing out what the key factors are that lead to the success of your market. Cllr Teare: One of the key successes is
the marketing and promotion that we are undertaking with the market. Another is the capital investment that we are
prepared to put into the market. I have
got £50,000 of capital expenditure allocated for the forthcoming year in order
to look at improvements to the market stalls that we provide. We provide the infrastructure that is brought
out at Cllr Bowen-Williams: The response to your own question would be that I fear the very structure of the market is in decline. Could I ask a question? What has been meant by the local authorities? What are local authorities as the questions are asked? Q198 Chair: Councillor Bowen-Williams, you know perfectly well what the local authorities are. If you want to make a point about the role of the town council versus the unitary authority then feel free to make it. Cllr Bowen-Williams: I think that is the point I would particularly want to make, especially after what has just been said about a district council paying for the cleaning up. In Bletchley, as you are well aware, about four years ago the Milton Keynes Council Unitary Authority decided, "Right, that's it; we're going to scrap the market." As a town council with only a town precept to support us, so no funds of money, we decided it was important for our local community to maintain this market. I would not dream of claiming 2,000 years of market history. I think the first charter was in 1609 when it was described as a fair having been run since time immoral, which I think takes us back to the reign of Edward I. Certainly there is some evidence within the same area of there being a market in the 13th Century. Q199 Sir Paul Beresford: So if your market is in decline, was Milton Keynes right? Cllr Bowen-Williams: There have been other changes. In the first two full years in which it ran it was sustainable. One reason is because the expenses incurred by a town council are quite dramatically less. We now have - and he is a very young and enthusiastic young man - a 'toby', he is not a full-timer but it is part of his job, and he is trying very hard. Many of the few remaining traders we have want to see the market develop and so do we. We now hold monthly meetings of traders and invite them to express their opinions and row in. 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 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 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 Q220 Sir Paul Beresford: Councillor Bowen-Williams? Cllr Bowen-Williams: I would agree with what has just been said but come back to the fact that there is a general feeling that a farmers' market would not work in Bletchley. We would love to see one. Q221 Sir Paul Beresford: The original question was what are you doing to promote your market? Cllr Bowen-Williams: Again, the process of leafleting, of local advertisement within reason and also word of mouth. Cllr Teare: One of the things that we have done for our Wednesday market is worked with our local Arena, which is an entertainment centre. One of the things that we have been promoting is midweek matinees. That is aimed at people who come into the market in the morning, go to the cinema in the afternoon, have tea and biscuits and so they make a day of it. Q222 John Cummings: Do you think there is a case for a stronger national policy on markets? If you do agree, what specific measures would you like central government to take? Cllr Bowen-Williams: I was going to excuse your responsibility in fact, speaking from the very bottom tier of any involvement with an elected position. As a town council, we do not really feel that the unitary authority has got very much interest - we do not feel it has got any interest in the town but that is slightly different - in the market. Q223 John Cummings: The question was about central government. Cllr Bowen-Williams: Equally, by the time you get so far as the unitary authority, I do not honestly see what one could look to see central government do. Q224 Sir Paul Beresford: What about legislative changes? Cllr Bowen-Williams: I suppose they could pass some legislation which said in some way the area was exempt of rating. Q225 John Cummings: You seem to have an air of despondency about you. Do you believe anything can be done by anyone? Cllr Bowen-Williams: I think I do. I fought for five years to make sure that Bletchley retained its market if for no other reason that it means that we have now got an assurance of a public lavatory nearby, because that is ultimately a requirement if you have got a market. That was going to be closed as well. All right, we had to take it over. This time we managed to persuade the local authority to give some money towards the total repair work that had to be done, but at least there is one now and it wins an increasing number of stars each year because of the effort and the expense put in by the town council. John Cummings: Is there anything else that the market sector could be doing to promote itself? Q226 Chair: Do you think there is anything more that national government should be doing? There is also the subsidiary question that Sir Paul was asking about the licensing regime, for example, which obviously would be a matter for national government. Cllr Teare: I find it difficult to imagine anything that national government could do. Certainly one of the benefits that we identified through the new licensing regime was the ease with which continental markets could sell wine and cider and alcoholic beverages on the street. Before we used to have to go and persuade a local landlord to create an occasional licence in order to create a particular area in the street which this landlord would then operate and allow the continental market to sell wine and cider. Now the new licensing regime gives you that opportunity so that when a continental market does come in we can accommodate that. I would like to see us taking more advantage of that on our normal Wednesday and Saturday street markets because there may be opportunities for new businesses to be created on the market stall which can take that into account. Q227 Chair: What about planning? You are a planning authority. Do you have anything about markets in your local development framework? Cllr Teare: Yes, very much so. My responsibility is for culture and heritage and markets and economic development come underneath that. We are looking at a project called City Vision and within that City Vision we are looking at how we can develop markets over the course of the next 20 to 30 years and there are some interesting idea coming forwards, like holding early evening markets where you set up the infrastructure on a Friday evening, it stays over for the Saturday market and then probably the same infrastructure is used on Sunday. That way you can attract in different kinds of markets, be it art and craft, be it food based or the general street kind of markets. Q228 David Wright: Do you get a lot of pressure from people who want to come and set up large car boot-style market activity on the fringe of the town? What do you do about it? Cllr Teare: We impose our charter market. Q229 David Wright: So in essence there is no way in for other organisations to set up markets in fields around the town? Do you get that outside of your area? Is there pressure from there? Cllr Teare: There are ones significantly outside of the area, not on the border. Boddington is probably an example. There is nothing to stop car boot sales operating through local schools and through charity organisations, but where there is a specific activity which is attempting to pass itself off as being a regular street market then yes, we do impose our charter. Q230 Mr Betts: Do you see the markets having a wider role in terms of other council priorities? Are they just a standalone thing that you would run for the benefit of the local community or do you see them in a wider context of offering opportunities for people on lower incomes maybe to get fresh fruit and those sorts of things or making vital the town centre in attracting people in? Cllr Teare: Since I took over markets some 12 months ago, my own experience was in terms of running markets, what we have looked at is how we can increase street trading outside of our normal market days in order to make sure that fresh fruit and vegetables are available on a regular basis within the town at inexpensive prices. As we have this infrastructure, 170-odd stalls are available to us, we have used it for voluntary and charity Festival of Life days and so we are able to put that into our market area and encourage voluntary and charitable organisations really just to display what it is that they do and encourage volunteering in that kind of way. We use it as a key component of our festival. The advantage for us is that the facility is there, it is a capital investment by the council and so we use it wherever we can. We have used it in our carnival. We use it for putting stalls out for the half marathon. It is something which you can use to invest. Cllr Bowen-Williams: I would like to add just a reflection on the difference in size of one council from another. Speaking from a town council and our market and again the point I have made about cheap shops, I am surprised that there can still be a feeling, irrespective of farmers' markets, that cheaper food is available on the market stall. I am not going to mention the commercial names of any companies. I am not saying the quality is not a good, but so many people are watching the pennies rather than what their dietary intake is. Equally, why do we keep trying it? It is because we have a sense of a local inheritance and a historical sense of it. Cllr Teare: On the Saturday market, currently it is six fruit and vegetable stalls interspersed across that 161, so there is quite a competition between them as regards their price and it does offer that kind of range. Q231 Chair: Is it your experience in your market that they are cheaper than the competing supermarkets, one of whom I see you are helpfully advertising? Cllr Teare: Yes. That is my understanding. Chair: Thank you both very much indeed. Memoranda submitted by London Borough of Southwark, City of Westminster Council and Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea
Examination of Witnesses Witnesses: Mr Stephen Douglass, Area Management and Engagement Manager, London Borough of Southwark, Mr Chris Wroe, Environmental Health Manager for Licensing Policy and Strategy, City of Westminster Council, and Ms Tot Brill, Executive Director for Transport, Environment and Leisure Services, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, gave evidence. Q232 Chair: I understand we have got Mr Wroe for Westminster Council. Mr Wroe: Yes. Many apologies. I am a very last minute substitute for Councillor Astaire who is unfortunately out of his post at the moment. Q233 Chair: I am sorry to hear it. Send him our best wishes. Mr Wroe: Thank you. Q234 Chair: The same thing goes for you as for previous witnesses, do not feel obliged to 'me too' if you agree with another witness. It is helpful if you elaborate. We have got your written submissions so you do not have to keep repeating your numbers and things that are in there. Obviously you are all three London markets. I think we have already appreciated from the witnesses we have had thus far that you are operating in a very different environment for all sorts of reasons from out of London markets. So you might want to concentrate on those aspects rather than where you are the same as the rest of the country. Are your markets thriving or declining? Is it some markets some way and some another? Could you tell us how many of the markets you run at a loss? Mr Douglass: I think, generally speaking, it is a mixed picture. I think what we have seen is a decline in traditional retail markets, but at the same time as that we have seen opportunities through specialist farmers' markets. We have also seen in recent years growth in private indoor markets. So I think what we have seen is the number of people who are market traders has remained stable. It is just that some of the on-street retail markets have undoubtedly been declining over a number of years. Looking at our statistics, that has slowed down recently, but certainly over the last ten years or so there has been a dramatic fall in the numbers of people trading on traditional street markets. Q235 Sir Paul Beresford: Does that matter to Southwark? Mr Douglass: Yes, of course it matters. We think our street markets are very important to us in lots of ways, certainly in terms of vibrancy and public spaces. Q236 Sir Paul Beresford: So what are you doing about it? Mr Douglass: What we are doing about that is we are looking at seeking investment. I think there is an issue about reinvestment in those markets. That is not very easy to achieve in the current economic climate. We are looking at working with traders in terms of business development and business support. We are looking at improving the environment in street market areas and there are lots of actions we are taking. We have just done a fundamental review of the whole portfolio, working with the National Association of British Market Authorities, and that has set out some recommendations for the future that we are now looking at implementing. It is because of this decline that we have done this fundamental review. Ms Brill: I think the picture is the
same as it is in Southwark, that it is patchy and it is variable. Markets have been changing over the
years. The things that are sold have
been changing. They are highly volatile. They react to changes in customers. So for us the fruit and vegetable traditional
bits of the market have been in decline, but Golborne Road Market has recently
become a success with the growth of a North African market there. We have recently set up one of Q237 Chair: Does that market happen once a week? Ms Brill: Yes. Q238 Chair: On a Saturday? Ms Brill: Yes. Q239 Sir Paul Beresford: Are markets important to Kensington and Chelsea? Ms Brill: Absolutely. First of all, because Portobello Market is an
iconic market in Q240 Sir Paul Beresford: What else is Kensington and Chelsea doing to boost the markets if they are that important? Ms Brill: We are just about to appoint a new post as a Markets Development Officer. That is not necessarily to go out and promote the markets, though that will be part of their job, but also to try and get new people to come into the markets so that there is a virtuous circle of local entrepreneurs trading from the markets and then moving on to business, so that we find new ways of attracting local people in to spend their money in the markets and for local money to stay in the markets. Mr Wroe: I think largely I would echo
what has just been said. It is a very
similar picture in Q241 Sir Paul Beresford: You have raised the issue of the London Local Government Act. Looking at the nods, you would like bits of it scrapped. What changes? Mr Wroe: We are not under the Local
Government Act; we are under the City of Sir Paul Beresford: Could you write to us and expand on the changes? Q242 Chair: Does the City of Westminster Act supersede and override the London Local Government Act and just apply to Westminster? Mr Wroe: It does. In general terms there is the Miscellaneous
Provisions Act which acts outside of Q243 Mr Betts: But you are seeking further amendments, are you not? Mr Wroe: Yes. We are at Second Reading stage in the House of Lords at the moment. Rather than amend our current Act, it is easier to start again with a new Act. Eighty per cent of the provisions are similar. What we are looking to do is make amendments to some of the existing provisions to cover various areas, including more freedom to back how we run markets more discretely. Q244 Chair: Can you be a bit more specific about it? So you could make a profit and then invest it or what? Mr Wroe: No. It does not touch on the financial aspects. We felt that that would be far too controversial. I would have thought the chance of getting a Bill through would probably be next to nil. They are very fundamental changes. That is one of the things perhaps central government can look at in terms of some national legislation about the statutory basis for some of our markets and street trading given the hotchpotch there is at the moment. What it is doing is it is giving us powers because at the moment in street trading individual pitchers have individual rights to their individual pitch, so the market is only a market in name. In reality it is a collection of individual licensed street traders. So one of the things the proposed Bill is doing, for instance, is allowing us to designate an area as a market and then give us rights more akin to a market operator to be able to shuffle people about, to be able to put commodities together. Q245 Mr Betts: Are you looking to do something similar to Westminster? Are you watching what Westminster has done and is doing? Do you want the additional powers as well? Should they go further? There is a very different basis for the markets outside London. Outside there is a statutory right to control other markets. Inside London the traders have a bit more power over their tenure of stalls and things. Ms Brill: I have been in charge of
markets both outside Q246 Clive Betts: You cannot do a tendering system like they do in some of the markets outside London then? Ms Brill: No. Q247 Clive Betts: Where, when a market stall becomes vacant, you put it out to the highest bidder? Ms Brill: No, because we can only charge our expenses and our expenses are the same for every single stall. It stops us from being able to create a sinking fund that we can use to develop the markets. Mr Douglass: I echo everything that has been said. Our view is certainly that the legislation is very unhelpful. Our view is that it needs more than just some amendment, it needs a fundamental overhaul. We are taking some legal advice on that at the moment following on from the review that I referred to earlier. I also get a sense from the legislation that it treats markets and traders as something that are undesirable, something to be regulated, enforced against, et cetera. It is quite negative in some ways because it also deals with illegal street trading, it is quite a negative piece of legislation, it is not about promoting and developing markets which is the game we should be in. It pushes local authorities, to some extent, down a regulatory enforcement route which is sometimes not very helpful at all. I agree with what has been said in not allowing us to generate a surplus to then reinvest, which is a big issue for us, and I think there is also an issue in that it does not necessarily establish market rights and that is unhelpful. I referred earlier to a growth of private markets. It does not allow us to adopt a strategic structured approach to the whole of the markets economy, it only deals with what happens on the highway or within seven metres of the highway, which is not particularly helpful to us. Q248 Sir Paul Beresford: Are private markets successful? Mr Douglass: Some can be. Q249 Sir Paul Beresford: I assume they are. Mr Douglass: I am not saying that is a
negative thing. It is just in terms of
the overall strategy and looking at the whole markets economy it does not
really help and certainly outside of Q250 Sir Paul Beresford: Would you bring the private sector in to run any of your markets? Mr Douglass: We are already in a partnership with the private sector. I do believe there are some advantages to that in terms of the commercial retail skills, things which can be absent within local authorities. I do believe local authorities have a strong role in terms of markets, but I think there is a role for the private sector as well in terms of those commercial retail skills. Ms Brill: The farmers' market we run is in partnership with London Farmers Market Limited, so it is in partnership with a private sector organisation, because they are the experts in that field. Putting it together in a street was a nightmare because we ran the risk of it being designated as a street market which we are trying to avoid because if it was a street market then it could not be run by London Farmers Market Limited who guarantee that what you have got is a farmers' market and not a collection of chancers. What we have now is an occasional market that we are going to keep being occasional for as long as we possibly can, but sooner or later we have to face up to the issue that the legislation does not help putting up new markets without all of the baggage that comes with it and having a relationship with the private operator to do so. I would like to see the ability for market operators to put themselves together as charities and run bits of markets, not even necessarily the whole of it but parts of it, but that is incredibly difficult, if not impossible, under the current legislation. Q251 David Wright: Did they come looking for you when they wanted to set up the farmers' market or did you go looking for them? Does the system stop private sector enterprise in that sense, nobody wants to come forward with ideas, nobody wants to bring forward new ideas in terms of private sector expertise in trading? Ms Brill: You will know that most
farmers' markets in Q252 Chair: Just to clarify, is it the legislative framework which is the reason why most farmers' markets in London are in school playgrounds? Ms Brill: Yes. Mr Wroe: I think it is worth adding as
well though that a lot of the issues that have arisen have arisen
historically. It is complete chance
whether or not some dim and distant monarch in the past gave an area a charter
and prior to Q253 Clive Betts: Given that everybody is saying the same thing to us, many different local authorities, cross-party, that the current situation has got real problems and it is not working, and there are lots of things you could do better if you had change of legislation, is nobody listening out there to you? Mr Wroe: One of the things about markets is it is very difficult to generalise. There are huge differences, I think, between the approaches, largely on the demographics, largely because people see the different benefits in markets. There are definitely financial incentives to charter markets, there is no doubt at all. As a market operator there is the opportunity to make a huge amount of money. Street trading markets are completely different. If it was for purely financial reasons we would never run a market, we would close them all down tomorrow because they cost us, but there are other reasons to do with community involvement and regeneration. Q254 Clive Betts: If you want a change of legislation, have you collectively put forward a specific proposal to say, "This is what we want to see, this is why we want to see it, this is a change" and put it to Government? If so, what has been the reaction or have you not got that far? Mr Wroe: No, I do not think we have got that far. Mr Douglass: The question also relates to what happens at the national level. There is an issue there in terms of who is responsible for markets, who is championing markets within government, the joining up of policy at a national level. Certainly the recent Food Matters, the review of food policy, was helpful in terms of looking at the role of retail markets specifically in relation to food, but you get a sense that markets are almost ignored across national policy and there is not really any one person there who is joining all of that up, who is working on making sure that policies on regeneration, et cetera, include a look at markets. Q255 Chair: Before we explore that point, the Association of London Councils, is that not an obvious vehicle for you all to get together and sort something out, to present a piece of legislation, or do the London boroughs differ so much that you would not be able to agree? Mr Douglass: I think it would be a useful
vehicle. The difficulty is markets are intensely local and they respond to
intensely local needs. Actually, I think
what we agree on is we want less legislation rather than more. We want more local freedom and a better
partnership with the traders in the markets to deliver that. I think we can get that across Q256 Clive Betts: With the changes you wanted would Government be concerned, do you think, that they might have a march down Whitehall of all the street traders protesting that you were going to come and put their rents up and run things in a different way from that which they have always had them run and change their way of life? Mr Douglass: They are flawed, but they are
ours and are historic. Mr Wroe: An example of that is pedlary. We have got six pedlary - pedlars - bills, private bills, from different cities in the House of Commons stalled because of the objections from pedlars. It is that easy to stop the changes going through. That is a tiny proportion of people compared with people who are street traders and market operators with their national organisations, et cetera. I think there would have to be a huge sea change in attitude where rather than a right it became a privilege to trade in the public realm. I think that is the mindset we need to see and that is why, even with our first proposal to take away a right of someone to pass their right down through their families, which has existed for so many years, our bill proposes to remove it in one generation so it can be passed down but it cannot be passed down again, our proposal to remove it in 50 years' time is being very, very strongly contested and that is how it is seen, I am afraid. Q257 Clive Betts: The rise of the unborn market trader? Mr Wroe: So it seems. With a huge amount of support in both Houses. We will see, we are at the early stage of our bill and we will see how that goes. Mr Douglass: In relation to that issue of putting fees up, as someone said to me yesterday, "I would very happily do that if that meant those markets were thriving and it was because they were thriving" and that allowed us to do what was talked about earlier, which is to generate surplus to reinvest in that service. I think what we have to do is create the conditions which some of the things we talked about prevent us from doing where markets are thriving so we can do that to then reinvest. Mr Wroe: Just on the finance side, I
think, again, it is so very local and we do charge different rates in what we
would term our traditional markets. The
market traders pay much less than our street trading, for instance, in the
centre of the Mr Douglass: You almost get a sense that in the past people have left their brains at home when they start to think about markets. As part of the overall retail economy it works together with the rest of the retail economy in an area and it should be seen as part of that and treated in the same way. Q258 Chair: Can I move on to another point. You talked about partnerships with the private sector, have any of you got partnerships with other public sector bodies for mutual benefit, for example primary care trusts, given the emphasis on access to affordable fruit and veg in some markets? Mr Wroe: Yes, we have. In the market that we are establishing we have got some joint funding to assist in that and in its promotion and also in our largest market - we have only got three and only one of those is a particularly significant retail market - we have devolved the management of it to the local neighbourhood office which is strongly represented by local residents and local market traders. We have tried, as far as we can go under the legislation at the moment, to make that a market which is owned more by locality rather than simply run at arm's length. Q259 Chair: Ms Brill? Ms Brill: No, we have not. Q260 Chair: What about the tourism angle? Ms Brill: Obviously Q261 Chair: Mr Douglass? Mr Douglass: We have not specifically worked with the PCT but we are working, for example, with arts organisations developing an arts and craft market in one part of the borough. There are some examples where we are starting to do that. It is new development, new opportunities and I think again, I referred to the review that we have done, that does highlight that is something we need to do much more. In particular you mentioned the link with healthy eating, obesity, and access to good quality, low-priced food. Ms Brill: We want to link our markets into the creative economy of the area so that they are a starting place for young designers to reach an audience for their goods. We have been working with local arts organisations to find ways of regenerating and shifting people around the markets. Chair: Thank you all very much. |