Yahoo News Farmers' market plan in Herefordshire after bust-up with ex-mayor
Moves are afoot to bring a farmers’ market to a Herefordshire town’s new public square.
“Ledbury is a chartered market town in a farming area and badly needs this,” according to Lynn Jones, co-owner of The Barn café and bar in the town, which hosted an indoor farmers’ market pre-Covid 19.
She said the newly completed town square in front of the bar, now known as St Katherine’s Square, would be an ideal spot.
But despite £120,000 of developers’ funding for the work, it lacks electrical connections, she pointed out, as well as seating and soft landscaping originally envisaged, leave it looking “a bit like a prison yard”.
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She and business partner Robin Oakey “are now trying to make it what it should have been” by putting in their own soft landscaping alongside The Barn, she added.
Mr Oakey said that at present, “no one is using” the square, and for its owner Herefordshire Council to make a profit from any future uses would “not be in the spirit” of its redevelopment.
He claimed the bar's previous use of the space had been hampered by a poor relationship with the town’s previous mayor Helen I’Anson, who had objected to their parking delivery vehicles alongside it, and to their putting out tables and chairs on it.
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This led to him “banning” her from The Barn during a town council meeting – a move he claimed was supported by other landlords in the town.
Ms I’Anson, who has now stepped down from the town council, was approached for comment on this.
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Incoming town mayor Stephen Chowns said he would talk to The Barn’s owners about their suggestion – “though it is to Herefordshire Council as owners that anyone would have to apply”.
A “memorandum of understanding” between town and county councils is being prepared over future use of the square, he said.
A spokesperson for Herefordshire Council said it was finalising the process for booking the town square online, “which all third party events will need to follow when it goes live”.
