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Relocating Wolverhampton City Centre Market and making use of private sector expertise to manage the facility are the best ways to safeguard the future of the service, the council's cabinet will hear when it meets next week.
The market is currently running at a loss of more than £200,000 a year. Cabinet councillors will be asked to endorse a range of measures when they meet next Wednesday (SEPT 10) designed to reverse the fortunes of the struggling facility.
The average number of visits to the market is low at just under 6,000 per month. The number of empty stalls is also a serious problem with severe fluctuations in trader occupancy. At one stage during 2007/2008 as few as 64 out of 110 stalls were occupied at the indoor market.
At Wednesday's meeting, a report will recommend that councillors give the go-ahead to continue to operate the City Centre Market in its current Market Square home for a further three years. During that time a business case will be developed and implemented to relocate the market to a more central site in the city centre.
The cabinet will also be asked to approve the immediate recruitment of specialist consultancy support, the costs of which will be met from existing budgets, to act as a 'critical friend' to existing management. It is predicted that running the markets service on a more commercial basis will result in efficiency savings of £50,000 per year over the next three years.
The final recommendation is to endorse the process of entering into a contract with a private sector partner during the next 12 months which will manage the markets service for the council. They will also be given project management responsibility for the intended relocation of the market.
The serious financial position of the City Centre Market prompted the council to undertake a detailed review, which began in 2007, exploring various options for the future of the service.
Councillor Barry Findlay, the council's cabinet member for the environment, said: "Wolverhampton Market is of great historical importance to this city and we want to see it thrive once again. Currently the City Centre Market is losing taxpayers' money and this cannot be allowed to continue. We simply cannot sit back and take no action.
"A market should be run as a commercial business and I don't think a local authority is necessarily best-placed to do that. Our proposals, which require cabinet endorsement, would see private sector expertise come in and look at how things can be made more efficient.
"The market has a future right in the heart of a regenerated Wolverhampton City Centre. However, the service must change to ensure the people of Wolverhampton get a modern, thriving market which attracts more customers by having the right infrastructure in place and selling the right products in the right way." |
