Let's save our street market!

BEXHILL'S Anglo-Continental street market may not be dead after all.

Last weekend's town centre event was billed as the last of the twice-yearly series.

But response from public, stallholders and shopkeepers looks set to force a U-turn. Bexhill Promotions Group co-organisers Sue Spice and Brian Storkey are asking the Chamber of Commerce and Bexhill Regeneration Partnership to think again.

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If this fails they may well seek independent trade sponsors and go it alone.

The original concept was to close the lower half of Devonshire Road and stage a market each year in Spring and Autumn featuring a mix of exotic continental stalls and home-grown produce and locally-produced crafts.

The aim was to encourage shoppers into town who would not normally venture into Bexhill and by introducing them to resident businesses as well as visiting stalls to encourage them to return to the town.

But a combination of the cost and complications of obtaining a road closure each time and complaints from residents about loss of parking and shopkeepers who said they lost trade, not gained it, meant that last weekend's market was destined to be the last.

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The Chamber group had hoped that if re-vamped as a piazza-style area, Devonshire Square would provide a venue for alternative means of opening the town to a wider catchment area.

But after the weekend success Brian Storkey said: "We are determined now that this is not going to be the finish.

"There are a lot of people who want this market to keep happening.

"We have lost such a lot in Bexhill. What's going to happen in the town if events like this go?

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"We have to keep this sort of thing going. Not only have the stallholders told us they want it to continue, a lot of the established town traders tell us that as well, people in Western Road as well as Devonshire Road.