Food for thought over market town’s gastronomic role

DINAH Keal, a Lib Dem representative for a Norton ward on Ryedale District Council (RDC), wrote (The Yorkshire Post, March 8) to express her own view on establishing Malton as the food capital of Yorkshire in the context of the potential arrival of a new larger supermarket.

Before moving to the main point of her letter, Coun Keal fails to acknowledge the outstanding impact that we have seen from the introduction of Malton’s monthly Food Lovers’ Markets, the Food Lovers’ Festival and will see from the forthcoming Cookery School. On the same day as her letter appeared, most were too busy to study it because Malton was buzzing as the first 2014 Food Lovers’ Market attracted countless visitors to the town, enjoying the Market itself and filling to the brim the town centre’s independent shops in the Market Place.

Tom Naylor-Leyland and his team are to be congratulated on an outstanding achievement over the last few years, bringing much needed footfall – new and existing – to Malton.

But Coun Keal’s main purpose of writing in response to the heart-warming story of Tom’s successful foodie ventures, was in fact to put the boot in against an application for a small food store on Malton’s livestock market site in the town centre (already given permission on appeal by a Government planning inspector), saying it would not suit many people who live locally. Coun Keal neatly overlooks the fact that Malton and Norton are already extremely well served by Asda Lidl, Morrisons and Sainsburys – all very suited to provide the staples of daily needs at competitive prices for cost effective, everyday shopping for all.

From: Helen Cox, 
Woodmoor Road, Wakefield.

WAKEFIELD’S controversial Market Hall, opened in 2008, is our city’s only permanent indoor market – but it is under-performing and costing the council £120,000 per year to run. So this new, multi-million pound building is now under threat of demolition so that the developers can replace it with an unnecessary, unwanted cinema and restaurant complex.

As a regular market shopper, I strongly oppose the closure plan – especially because Wakefield Council could immediately cut overheads by lowering the temperature in the wastefully overheated building, and accepting the traders’ offer to pay higher rents to safeguard their businesses.