Maaaarket Day

Abergavenny Livestock Market in full swing. Its days are numbered. It will likely be replaced by a supermarket and carpark, plus a new library. Plans have been proposed, opposed, deposed, reposed, supposed for about the last ten years, and are now going to be imposed. The cost in drawing up plans, drawing up more plans and yet more plans and fighting legal challenges has been enormous to the county authority, as has the time and effort spent by local people consulting experts and legal folk, and canvassing local opinion and that of farmers. Meanwhile the market has been starved of maintenance and is now very run down.

All this could probably have been avoided had there been proper consultation with farmers, townsfolk, the highways authorities and so on at the beginning, but it seems greed and aspiration on the part of a few influential local authority figures sought to maximise the money that could be gained from selling the site at the expense of anything else.