A TALE of TWO TOWNS In the NORTH WEST

ROCHDALE: Sleeping Lions Led by Hyenas & Foxes
by Brian Bamford

IN its current budget set for 2019/20 Bury Council declared that it aimed to regenerate and create thriving businesses, and communities as part of its £16 million funding boost.  In Bury, every township in the borough will receive investment under plans approved by the council when it set its budget for 2019/20 on 20 February 2019.  Including £2.7 million to promote business growth.

One of the main projects in the town's announced budget was the 'investment of £1.3 million into Bury Market, to ensure that the town's "jewel in the crown" continues to be a major attraction'; it has recently been voted the Nation's Favourite Market.

At the same time as Bury Council is backing  its famous market so Rochdale Council is effectively reported as condemning its own market to the knacker's yard.

On Monday the 14th, October Rochdale’s 768-year-old market is set to close after town hall bosses have claimed it to be ‘no longer financially viable’.

Recently I approached some of the market stall holders, who seemed utterly dejected as they anticipated the closure of the market a week next Monday.  . 

The Rochdale council claims that over the last year, the number of traders regularly attending the market had halved and it is no longer financially viable.  There have been four days over the past year, including two Saturdays, when no traders turned up, and on nine others only one trader was present.

While I was talking to some of the stall holders an officer employed by the Council turned up, and defended the Council's decision saying that it was costing the Council money to keep the market going.  He said that Bury Market was different because it had a significant tradition.

But when I countered that Rochdale Market, now in the Town Centre, was in a setting amid fantastic architecture overlooking the town's magnificent Rochdale Town Hall, he had to agree with me.

More troubling was that he couldn't reassure me as to what the Council planned to do with the former Santander building which was now serving as a small indoor market.

Some people are complaining of inclement weather & want to be protected from the weather.  Yet I was in Salzburg (Austria) in mid-February this year, and we ate fish from a plate at a table in an open square in the town centre.  How do they manage to brave the icy conditions there?  And note we were eating fish on a cold day - in an inland city - far away from the sea.  How I wonder do these people in mitteleuropa manage it when folk in Rochdale can't?

There is clearly something profoundly lacking in the imagination of the bosses of Rochdale MBC, and why is Bury so much better at promoting its market?

Clearly, Rochdale is a town in which sleeping lions are being led by hyenas like Cllr. Allen Brett, and property speculators like Cllr. 'Two Votes' Faisal Rana.

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