East Sussex traders claim farmers market is affecting business and ask for it to return to original site

Lewes Farmers Market is currently located in Friars Walk car park on a Saturday morning twice a month. It moved from the Cliffe Street Precinct during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic to give ample space for traders to practise social distancing.

Independent traders in the Riverside building – adjacent to the market – say closing the car park on the busiest trading day in the current financial climate is ‘adding insult to injury’ for local business.

Saira Foden, owner of the-stitchery store in the Riverside shopping centre, explained: “Now that it is ‘business as usual’ for most other businesses, Lewes Farmers Market remains located in a car park.

“Car parks are for parking. If the car park was fully available with the market located in its pre-COVID position, then more visitors and locals could park and shop at Riverside, the Farmers Market and in the Cliffe Precinct.”

Traders claim Lewes District Council advisors are further suggesting closing the car park on a Friday afternoon, so that the car park is kept available for the market, effectively doubling the closing time of the car park.

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Council advisors are also suggesting the use of signs to re-route potential parkers to a car park further away. However, business owners say it would be a much longer walk to the market for wheelchair users and those with buggies.

A Lewes District Council spokesperson said: “We have met with market representatives and continue to liaise with them and traders to find the best long-term solution for everyone.”

Saira and the eight other business owners, who have been writing to the district council on this issue since June 2022, claim the council have not worked with them to resolve the problem.

She said: “We have been writing to the District Council for more than eighth months to ask for answers and to request that the market return to the pedestrian precinct. If answers are even received to their letters, they take several weeks and are woolly, repetitive and distracting.

“Since Riverside’s last set of letters to the council, we have heard nothing for over a week.”