Helston Traders Back Plans for Night Markets despite Opposition

Traders in Helston have voted in favour of pushing ahead with plans to hold summer night markets in Meneage Street despite objections from the bus company First and some local residents. The decision was taken at Thursday evening's Helston Business Improvement Partnership meeting.

It was initially hoped the night markets would run every Wednesday from 18th July for eight weeks. That has already been scaled back to just four weeks in August though due to timescales and opposition from First.

At the meeting on Thursday, Town Manager Jonathan Birkett updated members of the Partnership on the situation. After a discussion, those present were asked for a show of hands to decide whether plans to hold the markets at all this summer should continue. The overwhelming majority voted in favour of pressing ahead, while many of the businesses there pledged their support by agreeing to open late on the market days.

Speaking recently about the planned markets Mr Birkett said: "It's an important activity because the only way we can encourage more people into the town centre is by offering something different. We could hold the market elsewhere but that wouldn't hit my objective of getting people to the town centre to spend money.

Meneage Street is the perfect venue for it. The difficulty we've got is it will impact on the residents and it'll impact on the people using the buses so we want to make sure we've done everything we possibly can to make sure those people are accommodated, it's about us all working together."

On market days the road would be closed from 10am with the market running from 2pm to 8.30pm. Twenty stalls are available and items sold have to meet strict criteria. They have to have been made within a twenty mile radius of Helston and ideally be unique products that you can't get elsewhere. 

It's now hoped a compromise can be reached with First so the markets can go ahead next month.