The Covered Market is one of the nicest things in Carfax Ward, the part of the Oxford I represent. I blogged last year about the terrible neglect of the place by the City Council and I’m getting increasingly worried that the appalling treatment it is getting by the Labour administration is going to kill it off once and for all.  I use the Market Barber in the covered market and works to that unit seem to have been going on for ages too.  I hear of stories of bodged roof repairs meaning units get flooded when it rains and there is a leak into the cellar and someone’s storage space that the City Council should have addressed months ago.

There’s an article about this in the Oxford Mail today about this and I have to say I am disgusted by the remarks Labour’s Colin Cook makes about some of the long serving and hard working traders.  He says,

“This situation is not just down to high rents. It’s partly as a result of the age of some traders, who are looking to retire and cash in their chips.

“When rents are assessed for market traders we look at close comparators on the high street.”

I don’t know about you but I think that is pretty outrageous, not to mention ageist and totally lacking in gratitude for the wonderful service to our City and tourist attraction the Market represents.  I do rather agree with the Oxford Mail editorial comment about this.  “while the council has a duty to maximise its income from its asset, it has to be big enough to realise that and make the necessary adjustments to make this an attractive business opportunity.”

My colleague Cllr Jim Campbell put the rent issue rather well in a letter to the Oxford Mail earlier this year.  He says “Although the rate of inflation over the past five years is less than 18 per cent, they have proposed rent increases of between 40 and 60 per cent.”

I think it is an utter disgrace that Oxford Labour claims to be the champion of fighting bad landlords and at the same time has so badly neglected the Covered Market and is pushing such clearly ridiculous and unsustainable rent rises.

Labour:  You are killing the HMO sector already with onerous costs on landlords – please don’t now kill the Covered Market by pricing the tenants out of the retail units.