Oswestry21

This job is currently being advertised on Oswestry Town Council website and in the Tizer. Presumably in market trade magazines also. If you visit the website, a click on the job title will earn you the downloaded details.

While I’m reluctant to turn OS21.com into a job centre, I’m aware that a number of people visit the site who have an interest in the market. Someone may well have the skills required to fit the job description and make the place more businesslike. Have a look and see if it’s you.

Just to forestall Town Council hijacking this event for their own purposes, some clarification is needed for readers and interested media. This campaign had nothing to do with Oswestry Town Council at any time, though both David Preston and Gail Hollloway have been aware of the nomination and competition from the beginning, with Gail Holloway making a statement at the outset. The competition in The Times came to the notice of Valentine Davis, who passed it on to Mike Coppock, market trader, who then nominated it for inclusion in the competition. The rest was down to people power, leafletting and word of mouth by Wendy from the Gates, Mike, Anne from the petfood stall outside the market, OS21 and many other people using their contacts and e mail address books to spread the word. (Many thanks to all!). Despite Guildhall knowledge and qualified support for the Powis Hall nomination, some Town Councillors have still, in private discussions, been talking of the redevelopment of the Powis Hall while the competition has been running.

In the past, there has been talk emanating from the Guildhall of match funding for improvement of Powis Hall should traders as a group come up with a sum themselves. Doubtless this was in the near certain knowledge that this would prove impossible, thus strengthening Town Council claims of lack of interest in the building in order to justify redevelopment. Now that funding in kind has been achieved, and we will shortly know what that might entail, it will be difficult for the Council to renege on those original proposals for match funding, and, after 1400+ votes cast in favour of a Powis Hall makeover, continued talk of redevelopment would prove rather unpopular, to say the least.

With an internal makeover, more daylight inside, a lift, replacement of the slate hung panels with something more colourful and contemporary and a new treatment to the frontage colonnade at ground level, we would have a pretty damn functional and funky building which the town could feel proud of. The Town Council only seem to see it as a short term financial asset, and not as the economic draw and social asset over long term that the town needs. Talk of a token market presence in the town with a few temporary stalls set up in Cross St. or Red Square do nothing to assuage fears that Oswestry Town Council (hosting the national offices of the National Association of British Market Authorities) don’t really want Oswestry to be a market town at all. And it surely must be the source of some embarrassment to the Town Council, hosting NABMA as it does, that the Powis Hall has to be reliant upon public action and winning a newspaper competition in order to fund improvement. A sad state of affairs indeed.

Note: some factual detail in para.1 edited and corrected Sunday 21st June. Ed.

The results are here. 

We won! 1407 votes to 1356. Something of a nailbiter as we were trailing by over 100 at one point yesterday and level pegging, neck and neck over today. The runner up was Urban Academy Art and Design room in London backed by Ruby Wax, so it was wonderful to see how local people and local media here in the sticks can win against a celeb backed and Twitter powered metropolitan campaign.

Many thanks to Mark at the Tizer & the Shropshire Star for support and coverage and Radio Shropshire and Severn Radio for taking this up in the last day or two and really generating interest and a really big thanks to Mike Coppock at the market for caring enough to nominate Powis Hall for entry. Good work!

Here’s looking forward to seeing Sir Terence Conran and Tara Bernerd up the top of the Bailey with tape measures and colour charts. Great news for town and shows what people power can do.

Final two days of voting, and an Art room in London backed by Ruby Wax is coming up fast in second place. If you haven’t already registered and voted, told your friends and e mail contacts, sent it round Facebook contacts etc please do so.  It would be a great shame if this campaign and the hard work that has gone into it should fall at the last hurdle to a celeb endorsed room in London.

Register and vote here: http://markethall.27stars.co.uk/ 

Oswestry needs this recognition and boost, and the market really needs to be bought into focus and into the town’s consciousness and shopping habit. Thanks.

Shake-up for town’s markets 

“A major shake-up of Oswestry’s indoor and outdoor markets is in the pipeline, it was revealed today.

The revamp could see the town’s indoor market at Powis Hall held one day less a week and a new location found for the monthly farmers’ market.

Oswestry Town Council, which runs the markets, is set to challenge Shropshire Council’s decision to grant street licences to stallholders who previously traded on the Bailey Head outdoor market but now trade on Bailey Street.

The council fears the breakaway traders have led to the “fragmentation” of the outdoor market on Bailey Head.

Town clerk David Preston said the proposal to run the Powis Hall market one day less a week would go out to consultation with traders and would be discussed at a meeting at the start of next month.

The town council is also investigating whether the granting of licences for street trading in Bailey Street by Shropshire Council has contravened its market rights”

The above was in the Shropshire Star, April 24th. Just as interest in markets, as sources of good, fresh, inexpensive food and places of social interaction, is undergoing something of a resurgence elsewhere, Oswestry Town Council’s decision to hold the market for one less day a week and to move the focus of the Farmer’s Market to another location altogether seems, familiarly, both to run counter to contemporary trends while manifesting a marked lack of intent in managing it’s assets effectively - unless, of course, there is an hidden agenda to wind it all down and sell the site for other purposes. 

Such an idea would be an odd one for a Town Council that likes to advertise the town as a “Historic Border Market Town”, and who derive income from hosting the National Association of British Market Authorities under an arrangement by which OTC staff provide all administrative, clerical and financial services. 

If anyone from the Market has a view, comment or information - the usual dirty fiver in a brown envelope will be handed over at the bandstand in the park. 

Over recent years, the Bailey Head market, run by Oswestry Town Council, has been in steep decline. 20 years ago, even ten years ago, it was busy, with a variety of food stalls and an excellent W.I. stall, but slowly it’s presence has dwindled and it’s function become less important. Curiously, this has come at a time when interest in “real food” and real choice has grown elsewhere in the country - to such an extent that this interest has instigated investment in town markets, and their value to local economy, tourism, town centre footfall and healthy eating is being increasingly realised.

Towns like Bury in Lancashire have invested in and promoted their market making it a regional shopping destination and one of the Top 10 Food Markets in Britain. More locally, Market Drayton is currently investing £500,000 in it’s town market.

By contrast, Oswestry’s Bailey Head market hall’s future seems uncertain, with rumours circulating around possible sale of the site for other purposes, a lack of vision and commitment at council level, historically shambolic stall rental structure, inadequate facilities, poor quality and outdated cafe - all of which have contributed significantly to the current sad vestige of what it used to be, and highlighting what it could potentially be as an important presence in a vibrant and varied “Historic Border Market Town”.

Most interestingly, there is an organisation called the National Association of British Market Authorities, who’s role is “………aimed at increasing the professional standards in the management and delivery of markets.”   and who’s website states “If markets are to remain an important issue for policy makers then the voice of markets must be heard at all levels of government and Nabma is ideally equipped to deliver this important role.”

This organisation, NABMA “operates under a service level agreement with Oswestry Town Council”….. (presumably for a considerable fee), “under which Oswestry provides all adminstrative, clerical and financial services………….. and all the staff at Oswestry Town Council contribute in some way to the effective operation of the current arrangements”. 

It seems noteworthy and incongruous that the Bailey Head market is so financially and promotionally underserved, and it’s future so uncertain, while under the aegis of a council which hosts an organisation who’s objective is to be a voice for markets at a national level.

As MP Owen Paterson has himself said on visiting Oswestry market in 2007 “………markets are a vital community facility and meet so many agendas in terms of business start up, healthy eating and local regeneration”.

If only the sentiments of Owen Paterson and NABMA could meaningfully and positively translate into a strategy for the Bailey Head just when interest in local food, good value, quality, variety, choice, small business opportunities, town centre footfall, local economy, tourism, town identity are all more important than they ever have been.  

 Yesterday Radio 4’s Food Program had a excellent piece on Future Farms, which highlighted two schemes in Martin Hampshire and Lincoln Massachusetts where residents have taken up the challenge of producing their own food.

Making Local food work a campaign led by Sustain.