• WHEN some of us who have been directly involved in Queen’s Crescent Market for many decades heard about the imminent closure of Buck Street Market we wrote to the council market manager asking her to write to the traders losing their pitches, suggesting that they be invited to have “taster” sessions in Queen’s Crescent.

Readers will be aware that this QC market had been very successfully run by a local community organisation for a short period of 30 months and it was booming. Then in August 2015 the council took back the management.

We now see 45 to 50 empty pitches on Thursdays and Saturdays – the market days. Last Saturday, a fine day, saw just 11 stalls. We regularly post information on our Facebook site Reclaim Queen’s Crescent.

We also frequently suggest how we might help the council to reverse what has been a two-thirds reduction in the number of stalls since 2015. Local people (almost 1,000) have identified the regeneration of the crescent as their top priority in the consultation report published by the council in May 2016.

Our suggestions about inviting the Buck Street stallholders to fill (some) of the 45-50 vacant pitches on the crescent do not appear to have been taken up as has also happened with the many other suggestions and offers of help we have made over the last three years.

The crescent market and shops are a vital retail resource to local people, obviously not to council officers or councillors.

MICK FARRANT
Gospel Oak, NW5