7:50am Saturday 20th March 2010
By Jeremy Grimaldi
WE won’t budge – that’s the message from street traders who face being banned from the town centre.
The independent stall-holders say they will defy a council order to prohibit them from parts of Regent Street, The Parade, Bridge Street, and Canal Walk as of March 31.
Their stand comes six months after the council’s licensing committee agreed to stop street trading to ‘tidy up’ the town centre in readiness for regeneration.
Biage Mazzotta, who has been running his doughnut stall in the town centre for 13 years, said yesterday he would not go along with any of the council plans.
The 49-year-old said he will have to be forcefully removed if the council want him and his wife Barbara to vacate their current premises underneath the tent in The Parade.
“I am not leaving,” he said. “It is simple as that. This council is acting shamefully and I have already put a complaint into the Ombudsman about it.
“Where are people going to get a coffee or tea for 70p if people like us aren’t around?
“This is a David and Goliath battle – I wonder if the council would ever take this sort of action against Marks and Spencer?
“It’s a complete double standard.”
Meanwhile, Jackie Clark, who has run a town centre flower stall for 25 years, said if she moved to where the council hopes to put her she “wouldn’t last a year”.
She said: “About 60 per cent of our business comes from footfall. If the council put us outside the town centre we will not last a year, I can promise you that.
“Street selling is an old English tradition and we offer people custom-made products that they can’t get in supermarkets where everything is pre-packaged. We think we provide a service for the town centre, we make it lively and busy.
“Our stall has customers from all over from Didcot to Oxford so we actually bring people into the town.
“I think one of the major problems is the way the council approached this decision. The people of Swindon were not allowed to have their say, a decision was taken by a panel.
“But the feedback we are getting is people want us here.”
The National Market Traders Federation claimed the move was out of step with other towns and cities in the UK that are trying to harness their most unique traders.
Roy Holland, the federation’s communication manager, said: “The Government has just published a new document that says councils should enhance and cherish their markets.
“I mean this is how town centres began – with market stall holders. Business people only moved into shops when they wanted more secure premises.
“We had a similar situation in Rugby recently when the council moved traders away, when they began to fail they were moved back, however the shop-keepers said they didn’t want them there.
“But when they were returned no one complained again because business picked up for everyone.”
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