A groan escapes the lips of the locals asked about Accrington Market. “How much time have you got?” one person says. “Accrington Market, where’s that?” jokes another. Everyone has heard the news, everyone has an opinion. Fewer people seem happy.
The noise started in November 2023. Following a Levelling Up fund bid by Hyndburn Borough Council, it was announced that after decades of uninterrupted use, Accrington’s market hall would temporarily close its doors. Why? So the Victorian Grade-II listed building at the centre of town could be renovated into a ‘higher-end eating, drinking and cultural venue’ that would make up a part of a wider ‘Accrington Acre’ and include new green and cultural spaces.
Controversially, this meant that all the stallholders, including some who had worked within the hall for more than 50 years, were forced to pack up and relocate outside. Though the market hall is due to reopen and stallholders return inside in 2025, the outrage was almost immediate online. One commenter declared it was “the final nail in the coffin” for the town.
Sensing public furor and discomfort from stallholders, Hyndburn Borough Council delayed the move from its original date in December by a month and offered three-months waived rent, ultimately allowing a softer transition to the outside in late January.
Still, it did little to quell the simmering anger, which turned to despair following the news that a mainstay of the market – Greg’s Bacon and Cooked Meats Stall – would be closing its shutters forever. At the time, local photographer Reg Whittam wrote: “Hyndburn Borough Council never has, still doesn't and never will listen… It makes me feel sick.”
It’s a story echoed across the country. A once bustling market town – having endured deindustrialisation, demographic shifts and waves of austerity – is forced to try and turn its local economy around through regeneration, whether locals like it or not.
“Consultation with market traders and the public has continued over the past 18 months,” a council spokesperson tells The Hyndburn Lead when questioned on the project’s reception. “There was much positive support for the project.”
But stallholders’ feelings are mixed. Some feel cautiously optimistic about the development, others aren’t convinced. Some are so strongly against the project that they have already moved or closed their businesses for good. But one common observation from stallholders is that the public had the strongest reaction to the news – particularly on social media.
“There was a lot of negativity, mainly from the customers to be honest, when we came outside,” says Jennifer, who has run the Petmart stall with her husband Simon for 25 years. “So I started saying: ‘You know what, I’m happy I’ve still got a job. And I’m happy we’re able to still offer you a service.’
“Then people will say it looks like a refugee camp,” she scoffs. “It’s a knock-on – one person says it, then another.”
That refugee camp comparison refers to the 19 cabins currently outside the market hall which house the stallholders who stuck around after the closure. The cabins are sleek, modern prefabs that wouldn’t look out of place in Manchester. That’s when they’re not flooded with rain water.
“Short periods of severe rain resulted in some water ingress into a small number of cabins,” the council spokesperson says. But one stallholder who, fearing backlash from the council, asks to remain anonymous says it was much worse.
Accrington Market. Credit: The Hyndburn Lead
“I put a carpet down but the weather’s been absolutely awful and the carpet was floating. Within three days it was in a skip,” she says. “You can’t help the weather, but who in their right mind would put boxes like these without a floor on top of the cobbles?”
Unsurprisingly, weather is a topic that comes up frequently among stallholders. Despite starting in January, and England having the wettest 18 months in recorded history, the cabins were not equipped with rain coverage until mid April.
“Take a shower while you shop,” one online reaction read.
The cabins also don’t have the WiFi that was promised, something a council spokesperson says is “currently being procured”. The anonymous stallholder whose cabin was flooded says she spends an extra £20 of data a month to use a hotspot in order to run her business.
Footfall is another thorny issue. Some of the outdoor stallholders are hard to interview because they’re too busy with customers, others, like Jas who runs a menswear stall are more free to talk.
“I just don’t know how it’s going to work,” he says. “This is Accrington we’re talking about. I keep telling them in the meetings, the companies aren’t going to come in – they’re looking at footfall. In my head I can’t see any businesses coming and spending money.”
Rachel Tyrer’s bakery stall, on the other hand, seems to be at an entirely different market.
“When we came out here business became much better. So from our point of view, the transition was pretty smooth,” she says.
It’s down this side of the market – a mere 200 yards away from Jas – where the hustle and bustle can be seen. Here the claims that the market is making three times more than the indoor takings make sense.
“Most of us are finding business is better,” says Tyrer.
Meanwhile, on the side near the hall’s locked doors, it seems obvious that the more traditional stalls that might not fit the image of a modern market hall have been lumped together. Traditional clothing stalls, a haberdashery and one selling mobility scooters as well as Petmart.
Further complaints can be found in the finer details of the Levelling Up planning application, including plans for a children’s soft play area close to a new licensed bar. Locals told The Hyndburn Lead repeatedly of a rumour that the bar area is set to be run and owned by Conservative councillor for the St Andrews ward, Peter Britcliffe – but the council says no application has been received from him. The procurement process to appoint an operator to manage the market will be concluding soon.
The majority of public criticism falls on the plan to dedicate half of the new market hall to food and drink, which critics claim would alter the landscape of trade. Even local political figures have weighed in on the matter. Previous Hyndburn MP Graham Jones, who was recently suspended from the Labour Party, wrote on Facebook that the new hall would “be half and half with a giant curtain dividing it.”
Accrington Market. Credit: The Hyndburn Lead
The council has reassured locals that traditional traders continue to be a part of the market post-renovation. According to councillor Marlene Haworth: “the investment proposals for the Market Hall have always included space for traditional traders and stalls, in addition to new food outlets.”
She tells The Hyndburn Lead she thinks the council has handled the situation “very well” and kept vendors informed throughout.
“We’ve had people on-site within the market hall itself answering questions from traders who were our priority in all of this. We kept them as informed as we possibly could…
“They’re all extremely happy – the units are doing brilliantly,” she says but admits “you can’t suit all of the people all the time.
“We’re told the footfall is better because people pass through the town square. I pass through there myself and quite often I’ll stop and say: ‘Oh I needed some bread or I needed some potatoes – I’ll get them while I’m here’.”
But Petmart’s Jennifer warns that a food hall will be a death knell to the market, drawing on her experience at Burnley Market as an example of why.
“We were there for five years. As the food came in, the rest of us got less and less,” she explains. “As stalls left, they just turned them into seating areas. We were sad to leave but the food changed the market itself. It’s rubbish now, they’ve not managed to fill it.”
Still, you’d be hard pressed to find a stall holder with a totally negative view on the market. Tyrer and Jas both agree the town needs to move with the times.
“We do need something to move on. We’re still living in the 1970s,” says Jas.
Like many towns in the North West, Accrington is suffering from widespread deprivation. It also has the misfortune of breaking the national average in all the worst ways. Weekly income in Accrington is 16% lower than the North West average and 20% lower than the national average. People living in Accrington can also expect to live 2-3 years less than the average person living in England.
Meanwhile, Accrington has an oversupply of empty shops, with 3.7 square metres of retail space per person compared to the 1.8 national average. There are four shopping centres within a single square kilometre of within the town – five if you count the recently closed outdoor market. If you pin them on the map you can draw a crude hourglass shape. An appropriate image, when it feels like the town’s time to turn things around is slowly running out.
Some stallholders used this abundance of retail space to jump ship to the nearby Victorian Arcade, which had declined in use in recent years. Dian Harker, owner of the Sweet Stall and Harker's Card Corner, told The Lancashire Telegraph at the time: “I looked at my demographic, stock and customers and thought it makes sense to be covered in the Arcade.”
Like the carved statues that sit above its entrance, much criticism hangs over the new Accrington Market. Regardless of the intent behind the market renovation, the execution of it has left many worried about the town’s future. Trust appears to be in low supply with many locals still resenting the controversial decision to move the bus station from Peel Street to Crawshaw Street in 2016, and many are unsure on what the town’s trajectory is.
It’s easy to dismiss the drama as local politics or social media outrage. But the tale of Accrington Market raises the question that every town in the country is being forced to ask itself: how exactly do we make things good again?
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