I AM writing in response to St Helens Council leader, Marie Rimmer's statement to a full meeting of the council about St Mary's Market on October 6, which was also repeated in both our local papers.

She is obviously quoting from information given to her by officers of the council, who I believe have caused the problems in the first place.

Mrs Rimmer said that market rents have not been increased since 1994, this is not the case. Traders who left St Mary's Market when it was closed on April 23, 1997, returned on the opening of the market on May 13, 1998, to find that they had 50 per cent more in sq ft area, but that, in some cases, the new rents were 100 per cent more.

In my personal case, I was on the second floor of Tontine Market until it closed. I came into St Mary's Market with 50 sq ft less in area, but my rent increased by 60 per cent.

Mrs Rimmer's "open-door policy" hasn't worked too well with the previous two council leaders. Of more than 20 suggestions or proposals put in front of the officers of the council over the last 18 months the answer has been no, no, no! Only one suggestion has been partially acted upon. Mr L. Teeling in his letter to the Star (October 14) hit the nail on the head when he spoke of a botched-up market, traders on the brink of bankruptcy and stressed out with all savings gone.

Most of the traders have aged 10 years in the last 18 months, due entirely to no-one in the town hall listening and officers apparently not passing proposals through to our elected representatives on the Development Committee.

There does seem to be some improvement with the new council leader (only time will tell). But all of the traders who have had to leave the new market did so while utterly lambasting a council's intransigence and failure to listen, which gave them no alternative.

F G Cross, chairman St Helens branch National Market Traders Federation.

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