As people are aware we took the difficult decision to postpone the farmers markets we operate when the Lockdown was announced on 23 March. It was a hard decision to make however we wanted to honour the Stay At Home message and ensure the health and safety of our customers and stallholders.
Between the end of March and in to June 2020 as a small business we have tried to support many of the stallholders who continued to provide the products which would normally be available from our Farmers Markets.
A number of the businesses changed to providing home delivery of their products on a very regular basis around the areas of the farmers markets we operated. We’ve helped promote the services they offered, helped set up delivery services, updated the website when we could and used social media to promote items available too.
Following the announcement that Open Air Markets could reopen on 1st June we have spent time looking at how social distancing can be put in place at the farmers markets whilst looking at all the other items like hand sanitizing, gating market areas, stewards, risk assessments etc., that will need to be in place before we can reopen.
Each of our farmers markets has it’s own individual issues relating to social distancing – some of the markets are held in High Streets where we will have to work alongside the shops that surround the market area and ensure queues don’t impact the market – with these markets we will be waiting until mid June with the reopening of more shops to see the impact this has.
Hall Place Farmers Market is in a location which is still behind locked gates with no access to the public – when the site reopens here it is likely that a one way system will be introduced, so the farmers market will have to work alongside the measures in place there too.
Our aim will be to ensure that the farmers markets are as safe for customers and stallholders to attend as possible. We’re busy talking to the different Partnerships that we liaise with to be able to re open the markets with their support
Once we know the re opening dates for our markets we’ll post this on the website
