FREE PARKING! FREE MARKET STALLS! QUICK — FIND THE PRESS RELEASE!
Well, somebody in Sandwell’s PR department has found the regeneration button.
Free parking!
Free market stalls!
Wednesbury and Great Bridge are saved!
Put the bunting out. Dust off the scissors. Somebody find a Cabinet Member for the photograph.
Except, of course, they’re not saved.
Not even close.
Sandwell Council has announced that from September it will trial two hours’ free parking and free market pitches in Wednesbury and Great Bridge.
And, to be fair, I’ve got absolutely no problem with them trying it.
In fact, I hope it works.
But can we please avoid pretending that knocking a few quid off a market stall and letting somebody park for free for a couple of hours somehow solves years of decline?
Because it doesn’t.
It’s a sticking plaster.
And at the moment it looks suspiciously like a sticking plaster with a press release attached.
Wednesbury: move the market, pave the square, plant a tree...
Wednesbury has already had plenty of attention.
Millions have been spent.
Paving.
Lighting.
Trees.
Seating.
Heritage works.
Shopfront schemes.
Public realm.
And, of course, the market was moved.
The Market Place and Clock Tower area has been turned into one of those modern Council favourites — a “multi-use space”.
Which usually means it’s expected to be a market, event space, meeting place, pedestrian area, heritage attraction and probably somewhere to stage a brass band on alternate Tuesdays.
The problem is that a nice public square and a successful market are not necessarily the same thing.
Markets need concentration.
Stalls need to be together.
People need to be able to wander naturally between them.
You need bustle.
You need traders.
You need shoppers.
You need something worth buying.
Instead, around Market Place we have different levels, roads, crossing points and bits of space separated from other bits of space.
It may look prettier.
But does it actually work as a market?
That is the question Sandwell should have been asking before the paving slabs went down.
And Sandwell’s own figures provide an awkward little detail...
The Council has already evaluated some of the Wednesbury improvements.
And people thought the town centre looked better afterwards.
Good.
Credit where it’s due.
But here comes the slightly inconvenient bit.
How often people actually visited barely changed.
Oops.
So apparently people looked at the improvements and thought:
“That looks much nicer.”
...and then carried on visiting about as often as before.
That matters.
Because regeneration isn’t supposed to be a giant decorating exercise.
The idea is presumably to get more people into town, keep them there longer and encourage them to spend money.
Pretty paving doesn't pay a shopkeeper’s electricity bill.
What happened to the shops?
Sandwell’s own research has been warning about Wednesbury’s retail mix for years.
Traditional comparison shopping — clothes, household goods, specialist shops and the sort of businesses people actually browse around — has weakened.
Meanwhile there has been a very large growth or concentration of hair, beauty and other service businesses.
Now, before somebody starts typing furiously, there is absolutely nothing wrong with barbers, beauty salons, takeaways, vape shops or any other lawful business.
They provide services. They employ people. They pay rent.
The issue is balance.
A town centre needs reasons to wander around.
If I go to the barber, I go to the barber.
If I collect a takeaway, I collect a takeaway.
If I go into a betting shop, presumably I emerge several hours later wondering what happened to twenty quid.
What town centres desperately need are businesses that make people visit several places in one journey.
Browse.
Shop.
Eat.
Have a coffee.
Use the market.
Stay awhile.
Spend money.
That ecosystem has been weakening.
Then there’s Wednesbury Market...
The really amusing part of the new announcement is that market pitches will now be FREE.
Sounds dramatic.
Until you discover that a Saturday pitch in Wednesbury was already only about six quid.
Six quid.
So if traders weren’t rushing to Wednesbury Market when the rent was about the price of a large fish and chips, I’m not entirely convinced £0 is going to unleash a tidal wave of artisan bakers, cheesemakers and antique dealers.
Maybe it will encourage a few new traders.
I genuinely hope it does.
But if removing £6 is the difference between a thriving market and a struggling one, Sandwell has discovered perhaps the cheapest regeneration scheme in British history.
The rather more likely explanation is that the real problems are:
footfall, spending, market location, stall mix, customer demand and whether traders believe they can actually make any money.
And those issues don't disappear because somebody deleted £6.02 from a spreadsheet.
Then we arrive at Great Bridge...
Great Bridge is almost comic in a different way.
Because Great Bridge doesn't actually lack shoppers.
There are thousands of them.
Asda is there.
The retail park is there.
Major retailers are there.
Food outlets are there.
Cars pour in and out.
So where is the traditional Great Bridge town centre in all this?
Over there somewhere.
Sandwell's own planning evidence admits the retail park and traditional centre effectively operate separately.
Even better, the Council identifies the retail park as something which draws trade away from traditional Great Bridge.
Brilliant.
So we have spent years watching thousands of customers arrive virtually next door to the traditional centre without apparently cracking the enormously complicated mystery of:
“How do we get some of them to walk across the road?”
Perhaps somebody could organise a working group.
Followed by a consultation.
Followed by a strategy.
Followed by a glossy PDF.
Then perhaps in 2031 someone could suggest a sign.
Great Bridge’s retail mix isn't exactly helping either
Again, Sandwell’s own evidence tells us traditional comparison shopping is weak.
Retail services are disproportionately high.
Hairdressers make up a substantial number of those businesses.
Takeaways make up a large chunk of the leisure offer.
There are gambling and amusement uses, convenience businesses and other services.
Once again — individual businesses are not the villain here.
The problem is what happens when the overall mix becomes badly unbalanced.
A row of occupied shops does not automatically mean a healthy high street.
You can fill every unit in a town centre and still have a poor town centre if there is no variety and no reason for shoppers to browse.
Great Bridge Market: yours for the bargain price of nothing
Great Bridge Market stalls were already only around £7 a day.
Now they’ll be free.
Again, good luck to it.
But if £7 was stopping traders coming to Great Bridge, then apparently the Council has finally cracked the case.
Sherlock Holmes can stand down.
Of course, those of us who have actually seen Great Bridge Market might suspect the problem is somewhat larger.
A market needs traders.
Traders need customers.
Customers need reasons to come.
And three stalls surrounded by acres of empty space does not become Covent Garden because the Council stops charging seven quid.
What about parking?
Free parking is probably the most sensible part of the experiment.
Parking charges can irritate people.
If you're choosing between somewhere you can park free and somewhere that charges you, that might affect your decision.
So try it.
But again, let's not confuse removing one obstacle with rebuilding a town.
Free parking doesn't improve tired shopfronts.
It doesn't create a butcher, baker, clothes shop or independent café.
It doesn't fix Great Bridge's pedestrian links.
It doesn't magically populate a market.
It doesn't repair years of retail decline.
And it certainly doesn't explain why all of these problems were documented years ago.
Show us the numbers
This is where I become particularly suspicious.
Before the trial starts, Sandwell should publish the baseline.
How many stalls are currently occupied?
How many traders are there?
How much money are both markets losing?
What is the current footfall?
How many people use the car parks?
How much parking income will be lost?
How much market income will be lost?
What are the current vacancy rates?
And, most importantly:
What exactly constitutes success?
Because I don't want to reach August 2027 and receive another triumphant press release announcing that 9,472 people enjoyed free parking.
That tells us very little.
Did shop trade increase?
Did the markets retain new traders?
Did more businesses open?
Did vacancies fall?
Did people stay longer?
Did footfall increase?
Did Great Bridge finally capture some of the retail park trade?
Did Wednesbury Market actually become a market again?
Those are the tests.
So what SHOULD Sandwell be doing?
Wednesbury needs a proper commercial review of its market.
Not another cosmetic exercise.
Is it in the right place?
Is the layout right?
What do former traders say?
What businesses are missing from the town?
How do we attract them?
How do we use vacant units?
How do we make Union Street, Market Place and Morrisons work together?
And how do we create something people actually want to visit rather than admire briefly from the bus?
Great Bridge needs something even more obvious.
Connect the bloody town centre to the retail park.
Physically.
Visually.
Commercially.
Make it easy and attractive to walk between them.
Improve the shopfronts.
Recruit better independents.
Sort the market.
Create reasons to cross over from Asda.
And stop behaving as if “Great Bridge Retail Park” and “Great Bridge” just happen to share a postcode by coincidence.
Give the experiment a chance — but spare us the fanfare
I hope the free parking works.
I hope the free stalls attract traders.
I hope both town centres improve.
Seriously.
But I won't pretend this announcement suddenly represents a comprehensive regeneration plan.
Because Sandwell’s own evidence says these problems are deep, structural and have been known about for years.
The really interesting question isn't:
“Will free parking help?”
Of course it might.
The interesting question is:
How did two historic Sandwell town centres get into such a state that the Council is now having to GIVE AWAY market pitches to try to encourage people to trade there?
That's the story.
And I'll keep following it.
And this is only the beginning...
I'll update this article as new information becomes available — particularly market figures, losses, trader numbers, parking data, footfall and anything Sandwell publishes during the pilot.
I also intend to widen the exercise.
I'll be looking at other Sandwell towns, high streets, local centres and shopping areas in future.
Shop by shop.
Street by street.
Vacancies.
Takeaways.
Barbers.
Vape shops.
Bookmakers.
Independents.
Markets.
Public realm.
Parking.
And, importantly, what taxpayers have already paid for in the name of “regeneration”.
Because perhaps the best way to judge whether Sandwell’s town centres are improving isn't another glossy strategy document.
Perhaps we should just go and look at them.
More to come.
#Sandwell #Wednesbury #GreatBridge #SandwellCouncil #Markets #HighStreet #TownCentre #Regeneration #ShopLocal
