Market stall in Kings Road for St Leonards Festival 2006

A new market for St Leonards?

Central St Leonards Town Team are currently consulting with local traders and residents to plan a new market for the town centre area. HOT journalist, Erica Smith, is also the new Chair of the Town Team and here she tells HOT readers about one of the plans to improve the St Leonards’ shopping experience.

The Town Team is a new group which has been set up as a result of the Mary Portas review into how to re-vitalise small town shopping streets. One of the main Portas recommendations for increasing footfall and spending is to run a regular market. St Leonards used to have a market and there has been a lot of enthusiasm to get one up and running again. The Town Team wants to hear the views of local traders, local residents and people from further away to find out what people want from a market. The plan is to add to the local shopping on offer, not to bring in extra competition for local traders.

Jan McTaggart, business partner in the London Road boutique, Who’s Wearing What, welcomes the plans for a market. She said: “we need a market to showcase the best that St Leonards has to offer, as well as adding to the range and quality of produce and goods – all at affordable prices.”

So far, the stalls which people have expressed an interest in buying from include a fresh fish stall and a cheese and delicatessen stall. But the Town Team want to know what stalls you would like to buy from.

At the moment, we are considering everything – we want to know what day of the week people think would be best for a market and what stalls they would like to see – and the ones they don’t want! We are keen to make sure the market is not a boot-fair, but has quality products at affordable prices. We will gather the information from the questionnaire and use it to inform a brief, which will be sent to any market co-ordinators who are interesting in running a regular market.

The Town Team can support a new market by helping with advertising and promotion. We don’t intend to employ a market organiser, but we do want to work with an experienced market manager to help establish a popular market, which will be used by locals and attract visitors from the wider area. We hope that a market will be ready to start running from early May.

If you are interested in submitting a business plan for running a market in St Leonards and would like to know more, please contact Pranesh Datta, Regeneration Manager
Email: PDatta@hastings.gov.uk or
Tel: 01424 451784

Here is the link to the online questionnaire.
You can also visit the  “St Leonards Town Team” on Facebook – please ‘like’ it if you want to be kept informed of Town Team activities.

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