COUNCILLORS have suggested that plans for street traders to come into Wellington on two days a week should be trialled for 12 months.

Wellington Town Council is looking at getting a street trading consent permit to allow stallholders to set-up shop on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

Councillors believe that not only would this give shoppers something extra when in town, but also raise much-needed revenue for the council through pitch fees which could then be put towards other projects.

But the idea has bounced about the council over the past month or so and the full council agreed on April 7 that the authority’s economic development committee should look again at the details.

There had been concern that stallholders turning up in Wellington could have a detrimental impact on existing traders in the town – some of whom are believed to be struggling to survive.

But Cllr Mark Lithgow, speaking at the council’s economic development committee on April 16, said: “We’ve had markets in towns for as long as we’ve had market towns. Markets do bring people into towns and if some traders are on the cusp of failing, this could help them.”

Councillors had been asked to look at what performance measures should be used to assess the success of the street market initiative.

Cllr Keith Wheatley said: “I’d think a good indicator of how successful the scheme is would be to see how many stalls we’ve got.

“If we see that stallholders and traders don’t come – it means the scheme isn’t working.”

Councillors suggested a one-year trial period and agreed that there would be no charge for a charity or community group to run a tombola and self-promotion, but there would be a 50 per cent charge if selling items that traders could sell.

A final decision will be made by Wellington’s full council.