THIS weeks Redditch Standard letters.
IN response to your article in last week’s Standard, I would like to see an indoor market.
It seems such a shame that Debenhams old store is not put to better use. There is so much indoor space there.
Why not have an indoor market downstairs and shops upstairs.
There would even be room to have various food stalls, serving international food to be eaten at tables and benches.
The customer toilets, I imagine, are still there on the upper floor.
I have seen this done at Spitalfields Market in London and can’t see why it wouldn’t work here.
The shops and food would bring in the customers and while they are there, they will look around the market stalls or visa versa.
It seems to be an ideal solution in using the space that we already have.”
Ros Pottinger
Headless Cross
I NOTE that Matt Dormer thinks that reinstating the market is a step back in time.
Could I point out that the fountain that he thinks is a 21st century idea was first invented in Mesopotamia in 3000BC?
The first still existing fountain in the UK dates from 1537.
Redditch seems to have had no market until it became a New town (I quote from the 20th Century case study Redditch), “Documentary sources also evidence a settlement at Redditch Church Green in the 13th century (Dalwood 1996) and an excavation in 1997 revealed a moated medieval manor site built over 13th- or 14th-century agricultural soils (Linanne 2016).
This may have been a grange related to Bordesley Abbey; however, there is no documentary evidence for this (Dalwood 1996).
Equally, there is no documentary evidence for a market place at Redditch, although the form of possible medieval tenement plots around what is now Church Green, on the 1885–1886 Ordnance Survey 1st Edition map, would suggest that an economic centre existed here (Dalwood 1996 and Dyer 1992).”
I checked for the next nearest market and found one in Feckenham in 1237. So! Fountains are definitely not a 21st century idea. Indeed, with the need to reduce energy use and not waste water, they are most definitely not modernistic in any sense.
The market is a much smaller step back in time.
Mr Dormer, a market provides a diversity of products for sale which attracts a diverse structure of consumers, who might also then buy a coffee or meal in one of the existing 35 food outlets within the town.
A second fountain (we have one by the bandstand) and three more eating venues bring nothing new to the town and will add nothing to the economy or the attractiveness of the town.
Mr Dormer’s thinking brings to mind the subject of lost marbles (first played by cavemen. Remains even found in the ruins Pompeii).
Margot Bish,
Abbeydale
I AM deeply concerned for children in my community and right across Britain.
No matter what’s happening in the country or the economy, no child should ever go hungry.
But last year, 4million children were living in households that went short of food.
These households are our neighbours, our colleagues, our families. This Government should be ashamed.
Extending Free School Meals to every child in primary school is one thing the Prime Minister could do today to ease the pressure on every family during these difficult times. It would ensure every child gets a healthy, hot school dinner, every day.
It’s a no-brainer. In England, free school meals are universal up to year two. Why do we stop feeding children at school when they turn seven?
Scotland and Wales are rolling this out already. Children in England deserve no less.
On March 24, the Free School Meals for All Bill is due for its second reading in Parliament. I want to see every MP back this Bill.
We can get this done. It just takes the political will and moral clarity to do what’s right.
Patricia Dufficy
HAVING just received my council tax demand notice I see yet again the highest percentage increase is for the Police Precept.
And while you might think well it only 5.90%.
I have compared my band D charge for 2013/14 when it was £102.43 a year to the £264.50 for 2023/24 which is a 258.23% increase in ten years.
Now if you compare that to the increase in the adult minimum wage rate 2013/14 £6.31 per hour and £10.42 in 2023.
Which is an increase of only 165.13%.
Perhaps the elected Police and Crime Commissioner could explain why he cannot live within the inflation levels that we are expected to cope with?
With the demand came a note from John Campion saying he is recruiting extra Police Officers.
Can we expect to ever see them because over the last few years the police have become rarer than hens teeth.
And is the government directly funding any extra recruitment because they saved the money when May scrapped 20,000 posts under austerity measures.
John Smith
Ledbury Close.
