Traders call truce as council aims to make room at new market

TRADERS in Henley have forced the town council into making changes to plans for a Christmas market.

The event, which will run from December 10 to Christmas Eve, involves 10 chalet-style huts being installed in the Market Place and will stay in place during the weekly charter market.

The council, which is organising the event, has said it hopes to encourage winter visitors but, as reported by the Henley Standard last month, some stallholders believe the huts will lead to a reduction in space for them to trade.

They also claimed that they were not properly consulted on the plans and were not given first refusal on any of the huts.

Now the council has applied for a road closure in Market Place for the second and third Thursday in December to accommodate additional traders.

Jo Eddon, who owns Honeys of Henley, raised the issue at a meeting of the council on Tuesday last week.

She said: “Hardly anybody was informed and nobody apart from myself and possibly two other traders were approached to apply for one of these chalets.

“Somehow there is a huge abyss of communication between who decided to have the chalets, who agreed to have the chalets, who has communicated about those chalets, how it’s going to work and where they’re going to fit in.

“The fact is we could lose possibly a 20th of our whole year’s income by not being able to trade freely as we do, even though we pay for the right to trade. It’s really important for you guys to see how serious this is for us.”

Tracy Betteridge, who runs Chiltern Lamb and helps to organise Henley farmers’ market, added: “We need our Christmas.”

Town clerk Sheridan Jacklin-Edward agreed that communication with traders should have been much better.

He said: “We really do value the farmers’ market and the charter market and the lots of local producers that we want to support. It’s really good for the town and it brings people into the town.

“That’s one of the reasons why the proposal for the Christmas market was put forward by the town centre manager and his team, to support even more producers to give them an opportunity to trade.”

Mr Jacklin-Edward said he couldn’t comment on why the market traders had not been approached to apply for a chalet and said he would raise it with town centre manager Paul Carey and events and marketing manager Nicci Taylor.

Councillor David Eggleton described the council’s communication with traders as “shameful”.

He said: “Originally, it was forecast to have 18 of these huts and that would take up half the market place, so you never had any consideration for the market traders.

“You’ve now, just recently, decided to have road closures to deal with the situation because it’s a total shambles in the first place.

“These road closures didn’t exist a few days ago until you realised that you still have to support the [existing] market.”

The proposal for a temporary Christmas market was put forward by the council in February, which included 18 huts being installed for the two weeks leading up to Christmas.

This was scaled back to 10 huts and the council asked The Maker Space, of Nuffield, and Henley marketing agency the Creative Duck to curate the market.

The charter market trades every Thursday and the farmers’ market on the second Saturday and fourth Thursday of the month. The two markets traditionally hold a combined Christmas market on the third Thursday of December.

At an events sub-committee meeting held earlier in the day on Tuesday last week, Mr Carey said there would be a meeting with traders to discuss the Christmas market in more detail.

He said he hoped the meeting would dispel any fears about their space on market days.

Speaking after the meeting, Mrs Eddon said having road closures to allow all the traders to trade as usual would be “fantastic”.