ONE of Blackburn Market’s longest-serving family businesses has quit after 52 years blaming the ‘appalling’ way the facility is being managed.

And market traders' association chairman Chris Appleby said the loss of FA Smith and Sons butchers from the three-day site was 'the tip of the iceberg'.

The new Labour leadership of the council have pledged to provide more support to traders, saying: 'if we were careful we will not have a market in Blackburn'.

Martin Smith, 47, runs the butcher’s with his brother Tony, 54, which was started by their father Frank in 1959 when the market opened.

But he said the current site had now been 'run down so much that it was no longer viable to have a stall there'.

He said that plans, which will see the current Ainsworth Street site demolished and a new market opened in the new shopping centre in Church Street, had been a 'disaster' for traders.

Stallholders were served with legal notices to quit the current Blackburn Market in March ahead of the move.

Mr Smith said that since lackburn with Darwen Council had reduced the venue by taping off and removing empty stalls.

He said: “It is a heartbreaking wrench to leave. My father started this business with a £20 loan 50 years ago and now we are finished.

“We have made a tough decision to leave and a lot of customers are upset but we had no choice.

“We have been told that to go into the new market we must increase our rents by 60 per cent and sign a deal for three years.

“That would cost us £70,000 and we can’t make that commitment because we don’t think the new market will be viable.

“Besides that the trade is so low at the moment that we cannot survive.”

He and his brother would now run their business from a unit in Whalley, supplying direct to the trade.

Mr Appleby, who runs a grocers store, said customer footfall was now half of what it was six months ago.

He said: “Martin and Tony are only the tip of the iceberg and in the next two or three months there will be many more following them.

“We now need to sit down with the new administration in charge of Blackburn with Darwen Council and I remain optimistic that they will listen.”

Blackburn with Darwen Council’s new regeneration chief Dave Harling said he understood concerns of traders.

He said: “If we are not careful we will not have a market in Blackburn.

“I am going to meet traders, and we need to look at a few things in the short term."

Blackburn with Darwen Council said 70 per cent of units at the new market, which is smaller than the existing site, had now been let - all by current tenants.