How to kill a market
Lessons from Lincoln City Council
Lincoln City Council has demonstrated in two easy lessons how to kill a market:
- starve the market of investment
- kick out the stall that drives at least 80% of the footfall
On a Saturday there would be a buzz around the fruit and vegetable stall. Not anymore. The fruit and vegetable stall now gone, all that remains a soulless empty space.
All we now wait for is collapse of a dying market.
A County Town in the middle of an agricultural county but no market worth visiting.
It is rare to see any customers at any of the stalls. How they cover their rent a mystery. And that was before the fruit and vegetable stall was kicked out on a pretext. Could count on one hand those have any customers, African wigs and hair styling, shoe repair and key cutting, butcher, fishmonger, zero waste, and the fruit and vegetable stall.
The fruit and vegetable stall kept the local community supplied with fresh produce throughout the pandemic, a veg box scheme for the house bound, all counted for nowt with the council.
One of the worst markets if not the worst in the country.
Guildford a Friday and Saturday street market if in Lincoln would be the length of Sincil Street. On the market cakes, bread, fish, three fruit and vegetable stall, flowers, French cheese.
In Winchester, specialty coffee, cheese, bread, fish, fruit and vegetables.
It is like something out of Monty Python.
Your stall is too big.
Not it’s not.
Yes it is.
It’s not.
It is …
Even for dysfunctional Lincoln City Council surely not beyond the wit of council officials to mark the stall out with chalk, then if cannot agree, go to arbitration. And in an otherwise empty market, if the stall needs more space, grant the stall more space.
What we are seeing is harassment and intimidation of a stall that dared criticise the Council for the appalling state of the market.
There appears to be a hidden Agenda. The council in cahoots with the local coop, trashed Sincil Street and the outdoor market, destroying many local businesses, Lincoln Central Market next? We only have to look to Newark, traders kicked out of the Butter Market, the market renovated, then handed to Cosy Club. Sound familiar?
Loss of the fruit and vegetable stall from Lincoln Central Market is not only the destruction of a family business that had been trading in Lincoln for 35 years, loss of jobs and impact on other traders, it is loss of fresh produce to local restaurants, it is loss of a convenient stall for the local community.
The local council does not care. They are though paranoid about criticism on social media.
Something stinks and it is not the smell of rotting cabbages.
Please sign the on-line petition objecting to the eviction.
If live or reside or work in Lincoln or have a local business please contact your local councillors and local Member of Parliament Karl McCartney and ask them to stop this eviction. They could of course have paid the stall a visit before it was evicted, talked to customers and check for themselves the facts not rely on officials running a vindictive vendetta for criticism of a badly run market. Did they?
