What's happened to York market?

ROB Benson is turning on the charm for customers at his card stall in Newgate Market.

"I'm coming, my darlings!" he says, to regulars Brenda Coward and Daphne Doran. "What can I do for my girlfriends?"

Mrs Coward gives a delighted squeal. "See? 'My darlings'. Where else would you get that?" she asks.

It is typical of the cheerful banter that makes local markets like this so special: and which has kept customers such as Mrs Coward and Mrs Doran coming back for years.

Not just locals, either. Mrs Doran has a friend from Sussex who comes to visit her. "And he will want to come especially to York market," she says. "He loves the banter that goes on."

Take a quick wander through the market, and you'd think it was thriving. Fresh fruit and veg stalls rub shoulders with clothing, books, leather bags, mobile phones and flowers. The smell of bacon and fried onions comes from the parked-up caravan that is Marsha's Kitchen. And everywhere there's the chat: the teasing banter that makes this place so much fun.

"Have you got two fivers?" somebody asks Paul Anderson at the leather bags stall. "I haven't, mate," he says. "That's how bad it is!" interjects Angie Gannon, at the ceramics stall next to Paul. "I haven't made two fivers all day."

Despite the attempts at good cheer, however, all is far from well at Newgate Market.

Gloomy market traders talk of falling takings, fewer and fewer customers, more and more stallholders packing up for good. Even on a busy Thursday, push through to the back of the market and you will find rows of empty stalls. The stallholders are on holiday, insist market managers. But there are more and more empty stalls anyway, counter the traders - and many stallholders are spreading their goods out over two or three stalls to make the place seem busier.

Doom and gloom isn't the right phrase, but there is plenty of disaffection around. Takings aren't much more than half what they were two years ago, claims Angie Gannon. In fact, she's thinking of giving up the daily ceramics stall she's been running for more than five years and in future operating only at the weekend. "It's not profitable any more," she says."

Over at Marsha's Kitchen, Marsha and Stuart Curtis have noticed the decline too. "I think the market is dying, definitely," says Stuart. "In the past two years, it has nosedived."

At his mobile phone stall in Jubbergate, Ian Ward is equally despondent.

"We're down at least 30 per cent on last year," he says. "My son is leaving the business in the middle of May. He's having to go. This place... I cannot afford to keep on my own son."

Traders agree on what they think is to blame: parking charges in the city centre which they claim are driving people away, and the regular 'event' markets in Parliament Street, which divert potential customers away from their own market.

Both are symptomatic, they claim, of indifference on the part of a city council obsessed with tourists but blind to the needs of a local market and local people.

It is what they see as the 'preferential' treatment given to continental markets and other event markets - which are allowed to set up in Parliament Street - which incenses the Newgate stallholders. They believe they should be able to set up stalls there, too - and more often than the one or two days every couple of months that are allocated to them on the "Newgate Awareness Days."

It is all about pleasing tourists, grumbles Mark Dove who runs a picture framing stall. But it doesn't make sense. "The continental markets aren't showing visitors what the true York is."

Rob Benson agrees. "People come to York because it is historic: and the market is part of that," he says.

The council denies it is against the market. The policy, says council leader Steve Galloway, is to try to attract as many people into the city centre as possible so that everybody, shopkeepers and market traders alike, can benefit.

The best way to do that is to have a variety of events taking place in Parliament Street at different times. It is nothing to do with favouring one kind of market over another.

"Providing people with something different from time to time is more likely to bring in new customers," he says. "One thing that can switch people off is to see the same thing week after week."

But what about those parking charges - aren't they driving people away?

No, he insists. Parking charges in the city centre have been frozen for the first time in ten years. And something like two million people now visit the city centre every year. It is up to the market traders themselves, not the council, to attract those visitors into the market.

"They have got to identify their market," he says. "If they are competing with fresh food or certain types of clothing - well, they have to be able to market that."

The council, he says, is prepared to talk to traders about how they can do that. One of the jobs of the new city centre chief executive, who is expected to be appointed in a couple of months, will be to look at ways in which the market can be improved. But there is no prospect of the market moving back to Parliament Street permanently.

"We do accept that there are several market traders who would very much prefer to have the market there," he says. "But the decision to move to Newgate was taken many many years ago. A lot of money was spent and I think there is no way back on that."

No one could argue that it is council policy alone that is to blame for the decline of Newgate Market, if decline there has been.

Lifestyles and shopping habits have changed out of all recognition in the past ten years or so. There were no out-of-town shopping centres, no 24-hour Tescos and Asdas ten years ago, points out markets manager Darren Lovatt.

Across the country, he says, many local markets are dying on their feet.

So is that true of York market?

No. Occupancy of the market runs at just under 80 per cent, he says - which means on average, more than three-quarters of all the stalls are still in use. "We are keeping our heads above the water."

The market traders do have to keep up with the times, he insists. "But I would very much hope that in ten years time we will still be providing a reliable service to the community."

Let's hope so. But isn't the harsh truth that Newgate market, despite the fact stallholders contribute hundreds of thousands of pounds a year in rent to York council, doesn't fit with the council's vision for modern York?

Not true, insists Steve Galloway. "There is no hint of that whatever. The market does provide for a particular sector of the shopping community... and we want to sustain it."

So does he ever shop there?

"I will say quite frankly that I have not bought anything in the market for some time," he says. "But that's because I have little time. Marks & Spencer is about the only shop I ever go in!"

None of which does much to make Ian Ward feel any better. The council just doesn't want to listen to the concerns of traders, he says.

"It seems incredible to me that the tradition of a market in York which must go back to Roman times and beyond is held in such low esteem by our councillors," he says. "They are either unaware of the plight of our traders - or just don't care."

Updated: 09:24 Friday, April 22, 2005