Video 3

An interview with Ian Kelly, Markets Manager

Market traders are obviously concerned about the future. Can you say when the outdoor market is likely to reopen?

I'm afraid I'm still not in a position to confirm that. The safety of the front elevation, the wall at the front of the market hall hasn't been ascertained. It will probably, almost certainly, have to be shored in order to make it safe and that is not something that's going to happen in the next 24 hours. But you've got half the market ground will be available to us probably on Friday and we are going to do our best to run some sort of market on Saturday and to continue with the Farmers' market on the (the regular monthly Farmers' market) on Sunday. We won't be able to run the table top sale side by side with the Farmers as we normally do, but we are going, whatever stalls are available will be made available to the traders that come to the Farmers' market.

What's the future for the traders who were based in the market hall?

It's very difficult to say. At this stage the whole issue of insurance, under insurance, even people that may not be insured at all has cast a very dark shadow and making the future livelihood of a lot of these people very, very questionable. We'll do all we can to offer what support we can, certainly we are looking already at 2 or 3 possible sites for a temporary market hall. Unfortunately, that's probably going to be 6 to 8 weeks at the earliest before we can do something, but there are a lot of issues surrounding that in terms of equipment and stock which have got to be addressed even when we've identified where we can put the structure.

So, the Farmers' Market is likely to take place this Sunday?

The Farmers' Market will definitely take place this Sunday. We will have to limit it to the farmers, artists and craft producers because we haven't got the stalls available for the normal table toppers. So whereas normally half the market is set out as the farmers and the other half is the table top sale and the general market, this week will be farmers and craft people only. But Sunday, May 30th there will definitely be a Farmers' Market in Ashton town centre.

If people have general enquiries about the future of the markets, who should they ring?

At the moment we have something of a problem in that all our lines of communication were based in the market office. We are trying very hard to get our normal extension number, which was 342 3268, or 3268 as an internal extension, transferred to a phone in the area where we're currently working from but we are likely to be moving around over the next few days until we get a permanent nest. But hopefully by tomorrow 3268 will reach us.

Right, and general queries from the public can also go through the Council's Call Centre?

They can and those are being passed to us. We are taking those. Someone is going up to the office on a regular basis and picking up emails, faxes and details of calls.