JUST to put the record straight with regard to the proposed development of the Market Hall and the Antique Collectors Fair (held weekly and monthly).

As far back as 1982 it was suggested that there should not be a Market Hall as such. By popular opinion the present hall started to be used ten years ago in 1994. The Antique Collectors Fair has been held every Wednesday since 1981 and the fourth Sunday every month since 1995. Not a big event (restricted obviously by the size of the building) but the longest running mid-week fair possibly in the whole of the West Midlands.

We advertise the event via 15,000 leaflets each year and trade journals as well as monthly adverts in an area covering Malvern, Redditch, Kidderminster, Stourbridge, Wolverhampton and even to Bridgnorth and farthest Shropshire. In this strategy you attract a lot of people to the town. Every week a dealer comes to buy from Bishops Castle, likewise others from as far away as Earlswood and Gloucester.

The situation is endless. A woman told me she could go to Merry Hill by car or to the Bullring, but she comes, like many more on a regular basis, to the fair and then into the town. To make an event attractive in this day and age, you must have a weatherproof building and a minimum of twenty-five stalls. There are so many alternative attractions and other towns of a tourist nature that you must make the area worthwhile to visit regularly.

Why not finish the original market plan by proposals almost twenty-five years ago - extend the building and add another floor to the car park?

We have organised fairs in various places, even at Weston Park for the Earl of Bradford with an attendance of many thousands over a two-day period. Our Book Fair is the longest running and biggest monthly event in the Midlands within this specialised field.

We have been inundated with enquiries from many people and places - even Dutch and London tourists - who make Bromsgrove Antique Collectors Fair part of their itinerary.

A lady rang the market asking what the future was. She had rung the council offices who had said to ask the chap who runs the fair. Needless to say I could not help her other than what was in the local newspaper. Strangely, in this age of communication, nobody of any particular authority has broached the subject.

Perhaps when the sums and the strategy are (presumably) on a firm footing, the Antique Collectors fair can continue to go forwards. We shall be positive (as usual) whatever the direction we have to take.

Royston Slim and Ivor Simpson

Hayley Green