Recent events mark a new low in the relationship between the Covered Market traders and the council.

For 12 months, as members of a Cross Party Scrutiny Panel, we have been been working to see why this relationship has soured and what can be done to improve it.

With the publication of the helpful report by the Retail Group, with our own Scrutiny recommendations to council and with the welcome decision to appoint a manager, we hoped that matters would improve.

However, since the arbitrator published his report on the Rent Review, in February, everything has unravelled.

The council believes the arbitrator’s arguments are flawed and will not accept them as the basis for settling the remaining rents.

They have offered a 20 per cent incease. The traders have responded with a proposed 7.3 per cent increase, based on the arbitrator’s award.

And so it goes on...

Our Scrutiny role has finished but, as individuals, we are still trying to defuse the situation. We believe a key problem is the lack of contact at senior level between council and traders, and that what is now needed is an early meeting where they sit down together to work out a resolution.

Such a meeting would need a neutral facilitator, and a willingness to put aside, at least temporarily, the entrenched positions both sides have adopted.

The alternative is more months of wrangling, and costly arbitration, which will jeopardise the future of the market.

City Councillor ELISE BENJAMIN Magdalen Road,
Oxford City Councillor JIM CAMPBELL Frenchay Road,
Oxford City Councillor MARY CLARKSON Dunstan Road, Headington
City Councillor JEAN FOOKS St Bernard’s Road, Oxford