MARKET HALL

Derby City council, which owns the site, wants to increase rents by 16%, but the 70 or so stallholders say this would cause more of them to move out of the site. Traders on the main floor pay £18 a year for each square foot they rent from the council, with stalls ranging from 75 to 200 square feet in size. A stallholder with 75 square feet pays £1,350 to the council, while annual rent for the larger stalls costs up to £3,600.

Under the planned increase, the costs would rise to £1,575 and £4,200 respectively. Michael Roach, one of the stallholders, admitted that shoppers and traders alike were already abandoning the market. He said, "We're not doing very well as it is and this is not going to help. It's another nail in the coffin for the market. There are fewer people coming in and people are giving up their stalls." He blamed competition from the Eagle Market, where stalls benefit from big-name shops like Boots and W H Smith to lure customers in.

Traders in the Eagle Centre currently pay between £25 and £27 per square foot per year. Research carried out by Derby City Council has revealed that Market Hall traders are paying much lower rents than their counterparts in other covered markets around the UK. The councils chief estates manager, Steve Meynell, said that the 16.6% rise would take rents to a fair level.

Derby City Council will be replacing parts of the copper roof of the Market Hall to repair leaks and prevent water damage. The work will take about 10 weeks, depending on the weather, and will be funded by £111,000 from the Council’s Property Services budget, not market traders’ rents. To comply with advice from English Heritage, the new copper will be allowed to oxidise naturally to match the green colour of the existing copper over the next couple of decades.

The last time any of the copper was replaced was probably in 1967, as a marking with this date has been found in the roof. Councillor Philip Hickson, Cabinet Member for Performance Management, Economic Development and Housing, said, “This work has been planned into the Property Services budget for some time and needs to be done now, it will not be funded by any future increase in market traders’ rents. The colour difference between the old and the new copper will, I think, make an eye-catching feature in the city centre for a while, allowing people to see the evolution of this Victorian building."

Traders in the city's Market Hall criticised the city council because they cannot shut out the cold weather. The automatic sliding doors at the Guildhall end of the building failed in December 2004, leaving traders shivering. A quick repair made only days after the first failure worked for just a few days before it too failed. Since then the doors have been wide open, leaving traders exposed to the elements. Mild conditions in January were tolerated by the stallholders, but with the onset of sub-zero temperatures this week, they are having to take extreme measure to combat the cold.

"It's terrible. You can see your breath in front of your face all day long and even the shoppers complain of the cold," said one of the traders, who wears a woolly jumpers and fleece, a hat and fingerless gloves to keep warm. Other workers have taken to standing on cardboard in a bid to provide underfoot insulation. Some have fan-heaters plugged in under their counters, but they provided little comfort against the biting cold. Another trader said, "It's not good enough. We pay to be under cover and expect at least a little protection from the elements in return for our rent."

"These doors packed up in December and have been wide open ever since," he said. "I'm on the move all the time but it's still unbearably cold. It must be worse for the people who can't move away from a till all day. The wind funnels past the Guildhall entrance and whistles into the Market Hall. The entrance is also exposed to the elements and when it rains, or snows, they have to get squeegees out and clear the entrance, which gets very wet and slippery."

Another trader said, "They told us they would be mended in January, but here we are past the middle of February and they still haven't been done." Markets officer Dennis Wardle said that the work should have been done but the council was having difficulties getting the parts needed. He said, "Those doors were put up in 1989 and on a busy week might have 100,000 people passing through them. They've given very reliable service until now, but because of their age we are having difficulty getting the parts to repair them. It has to be done on a Sunday to cause the least disruption to trade, but until we get the parts we can't do it."