Council urged to halt ‘crude’ plan to alter marketplace

AN action group has been set up to fight unwanted developments in an East Riding market town - including the removal of historic setts from its marketplace.

The £2.5m upgrade of Saturday Market is being opposed by Beverley Civic Society and a recent public meeting at Toll Gavel Church chaired by the town’s mayor Margaret Pinder drew 500 people.

As well as a unanimous vote against the removal of the cobble setts - thought to date back to the 1800s - the meeting also voted against East Riding Council selling off its Grovehill depot for a retail park and build a science, technology and business park instead.

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They also called for reductions in “enormous” housebuilding targets for the town - up to 3,400 in the next 15 years.

A new group, Beverley Action, is calling for people to sign a petition to save the setts, which are scheduled for removal in the New Year.

On its website the group says the town is “threatened at all sides” with large retail, commercial and housing and road schemes.

It urges people to sign a petition against the “crude, inappropriate” scheme which will change “the character of Beverley’s main square for the worse, forever with the appearance of a supermarket car park.”

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East Riding Council says it has listened to groups, including the disabled, and have come up with a compromise which would see some of the setts retained at the entrance of Old Waste, the ends of each row of car park spaces and an area off Ladygate.

But Prof Barbara English, from the Civic Society, said the council seemed “indifferent” to peoples’ views: “The council keeps putting out this picture saying how happy everybody is about it – but the 500 who came to the meeting are totally against it.”

Yesterday the council confirmed it would press on, without further changes to the design.

Director of environment and neighbourhood services Nigel Leighton said no matter how well laid the setts would not provide a suitable surface for pedestrians, particularly less-able bodied people. He said: “Given the area is being promoted for continued use by market traders and other events used by predominantly pedestrians, the compromise suggested offers the best way forward in terms of meeting different groups’ aims and objectives.”

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