Councillor criticises strategy over five-year plan to revitalise city centre market

A SENIOR councillor has described Leeds Kirkgate Market’s food hall as “echoey” and “less successful than it could have been”.

It comes as Leeds City Council unveiled its five-year plan to revitalise Yorkshire’s biggest indoor market at a meeting of senior decision-makers this week. Making the comments, Leeds Liberal Democrats leader Coun Stewart Golton also told a meeting of the council’s decisionmaking Executive Board that the plans focused too much on developments outside the market, and didn’t demonstrate how they would improve business at the site.

But Coun Jonathan Pryor (Lab), the council’s executive member in charge of markets, claimed that while more could be done with the space, it was currently running at 100 per cent occupancy and could not be deemed unsuccessful. A document by council officers said the authority wanted to collaborate with market traders to “cement the market’s place as a modern and accessible shopping destination in the heart of Leeds”.

But Coun Golton said more could have been done with the food hall and event space at the bottom end of the market, which was opened in 2016.

He added: “I think we have lost our way a little bit in terms of how we get to the next stage for the market. Most of the headlines in this report seem to be the property development end of it – like the George Street development.

“But it doesn’t actually demonstrate any extra business is being delivered from that relationship, as was hoped.”

The plan includes, the council says, a strategy to ensure the market “operates in a more environmentally sustainable way”, with a focus on how market traders can reduce their carbon footprint, as well as plans to make the facility more age and disability-friendly.

The council added that the market would continue to put on events and introducing low cost “pop-up” units.