The leader of Liverpool Council has said the city was left with “literally no option” but to close St Johns Market amid the ongoing row over unpaid rent.
Last Autumn, Liverpool Council said it would seek to recover three years’ worth of arrears from the dozens of businesses located within the historic city centre market. After months of negotiations failed, traders and shoppers were left shuttered out of the site last Monday. “After a number of letters back and forth between the legal representatives, we were clear that if a practical way didn’t come forward, we would have to start the process of closure of some of those businesses and that’s where we ended up last Monday.”
“More fundamentally as well, council tax payers expect us to be bringing in all the revenues we can that are due to us. The only time we’ve written debt off is when individuals have died or companies have liquidated so from that perspective we’ve had to work our way through all of this and it wasn’t viable to keep putting this off, we had to take the action that we did.”
“The letters were quite clear that if there wasn’t any meaningful engagement in repaying the existing arrears - because that’s outstanding debt we need to recover - and also resume payments of rent at the proper rates, then it would lead to the closure. It was the days prior to Monday that those final things were happening, after the final exchange of letters.