Council chief defends decision to close Barrow’s market
Miranda CannonThe chief executive of Westmorland and Furness Council has defended this week’s decision to close Barrow market saying the authority had little choice.However, she has sought to reassure shoppers and traders that action is underway to find at a least a temporary home.Miranda Cannon was speaking to Business Crack at the end of a week which saw businesses given just hours to vacate their stalls.“We’ve been having very regular monitoring by external experts who have been testing water coming through the building for the presence of asbestos and in recent days we were told that the risk was increasing,” Ms Cannon said adding the risk to health and safety was such that they had little option but to insist on closure.Plans for a temporary location for the market to be occupied in six months’ time were being drawn up.This was assuming councillors agreed to the demolition of the market and The Forum buildings when the council’s cabinet meets next month.“We had some detailed, independent assessments of the buildings around their viability, to refurbish or repurpose and I think the likely recommendations that are going forward to cabinet are it’s going to be prohibitively expensive,” the chief executive said.But with demolition always a possibility – a tender was offered to contractors as far back as last August for the work – should a plan B have been drawn up making use of some of the empty shops around the town centre?“We were on a trajectory and the news this week has put things out of sequence. What we want to do is work with market traders to determine what their wishes are and work with them to come up with the best options.“It could be temporary outdoor-type if that’s what the traders were comfortable with. I don’t want to presume what’s right for each of these traders because I know some of them may feel that that’s not going to work for them.“I think the next few weeks are critical in putting investment and effort into establishing something of that nature. Barrow BID, BAE Systems and others who have got space and options have been coming forward and offering some of those opportunities.”A special project team led by Steph Corden, the council’s director of thriving communities, has been set up and is reporting back daily to the council’s chief executive about relocation plans.In a previous role, Ms Cannon said she worked to help relocate traders on Leicester market to a temporary home while repair work was carried out to the building there.“I know how strongly people feel about that market, the history etc, and it’s the same in Barrow; they are a community in themselves,” she said.“I’ve been really excited that we feel like we’re gearing up now to really see some plans come to fruition for Barrow. “But this is a bit of a frustration for me. We’ve got some exciting plans around investment in places like the Town Hall which has stepped up to provide an offer. How do we step that up further to provide more culture and community use is where we are now.”She added: “We’re looking at the public spaces in and around the Town Hall because there’s quite a lot of space in and around that building. “So how do we set that up so we can programme it to provide more of a food offer, a recreation offer, festivals and events, that kind of thing.”Partners like the University of Cumbria are, she says, keen to see more use of their new space and investigate how to bring the community into that space.But this week has seen questions raised about the pace of change. Other high profile projects – Windermere Gateway, plans to replace Windermere’s ferry, the reopening of Grange pool – have faltered. How soon before the plans in Barrow become a reality?“A big redevelopment takes a lot of time and I know people want to see some change now so it’s really important to us that we work quickly over the next few months so that actually people feel that sense of the commitment,” she said.“I’ve heard that feeling of false dawns, particularly for Barrow,” Ms Cannon admits.“In terms of the bigger plan around what’s next, we’ve got external experts on board working through them because if we’re going to spend significant amounts of money on whatever we do in terms of the town centre, it has to follow a proper kind of process, outline business case, a financial case, a detailed business case etc.“At the moment we’ve had a lot of the community conversations about an outline business case.“There’s now going to be work moving forward on a more detailed financial business case. I know that’s the frustration because some of that just inevitably takes quite a lot of time before we know what we actually afford to deliver.“We’re not at the stage of being able to say this is absolutely what that master plan looks like but we are absolutely engaging with experts as we have now with the Marina Village. It’s no good doing one bit of the jigsaw.”With calls for cultural as well as trading and housing developments to be clarified, plus Team Barrow’s nationally recognised mission to attract workers to join BAE Systems under scrutiny, there is pressure on the authority to be seen to be taking action in 2026.The authority’s new lead officer is adamant the pace will pick up but only when there is confidence that the decisions taken are right for Barrow.She added: “I hear the message definitely from the community that we need to see some delivery. And I absolutely get that. I want to make sure we’ve got the right expertise in the council and external partners to help us on that.”
