Readers' Letter: Doncaster market is being destroyed

Once again the incompetent company appointed to run Doncaster Market have come up with a plan which they hope will destroy the outdoor market.

Friday, 26th November 2021, 9:00 am
Doncaster market stalls

They claim to have been tasked by Doncaster Council with reducing anti-social behaviour in the market area. This is said to consist of homeless people sleeping on the stall tops. This does occur, I have seen them myself still asleep at 7am. When roused by an operative they quietly pack up and move away. They have harmed nothing and no-one but themselves.This is deemed to be a problem and the nonsensical solution dreamed up by R.G., the Area Manager and arch enemy of traders, is to remove the stall tops and the steel beam which support them.

Despite MAM supposedly making annual loses and requiring a gift of £910,000 from DMBC, they propose buying tables which would be distributed by the operatives each morning of the market. I am told this would occur from 8am (I start setting up my pitch at 6.40am and I am not the first). The tables would be 5ft x 3ft and each stall would get two. This would give a total area of 30sqft. The present stall tops provide 48 sqft per pitch for a Wednesday rent of £10. There is no proposal to reduce the rent despite our useable area being cut by 37.5 per cent.

The whole thing is just a thinly veiled attempt to get rid of the outdoor market and I would hope that your readers would express their disapproval by every channel that they can. Don’t get me started on the skittle alley in the Wool Market.

Sign up to our daily newsletter

The i newsletter cut through the noise

Tony Jackson

Windsor Crescent, Scunthorpe