Make Markets Matter

A tale of two tenancies

I’ve just been to an event at the new Make CIC venue on Argyle Street in Birkenhead. It was a free session put on by Google as part of their ‘Digital Garage’ initiative, which offers training to businesses on the latest technology available in their ecosystem. This one was based on Gemini, their AI tool, and was very enlightening. They even laid on an excellent free lunch. One of my better days at work.

Towards the end, Birkenhead MP Alison McGovern, herself a tenant of Make CIC, appeared and gave a quick speech thanking us and Google for coming to Birkenhead, and saying what an asset having a venue like Make is for both visitors and local businesses alike. I couldn’t agree more. They previously had a location just off Hamilton Square which was home to the excellent Nettle Café but this year moved to their new, larger premises near Future Yard thanks to a £1million+ grant from Wirral Council (technically from a £25m national pot of money called the Town Deal awarded to Wirral by the last Tory government). They’ve done wonders with the former Riverside Housing offices and the ground floor is now a modern, open plan space where companies like Google don’t look out of place with their fancy branding. Did I mention I got a free Google tote bag, notebook AND pen?!

Google in Birkenhead

As Alison talked of the importance of creating a place for small businesses to develop and thrive after years of austerity and decline in Birkenhead - Make is not just a venue but also rents out studios and office spaces to independent and creative small businesses and, I guess, Labour politicians - I couldn’t help but think of another group of small, independent businesses who have needed a secure space to trade for years now, but still face an uncertain future: the traders of Birkenhead Market.

The sad plight of Birkenhead Market precedes my time as a Wirralite but in a nutshell, around 2019/2020 there were plans to move the market stalls into the vacant House of Fraser building a short distance away, as the current market was underoccupied and no longer fit for purpose. This plan was scrapped when they decided to demolish House of Fraser instead (I was told the basement was under 6ft of water). The council then proposed moving the market into the vacant (I’m going to be using that word a lot, this is Birkenhead after all) Argos store, which the traders didn’t agree with as the premises are too small. The traders instead suggested the vacant Marks and Spencer site, a spacious lot in a much more central location, and even went some way to negotiating a sublease independently. For unclear reasons, the council said no and are pushing ahead with the Argos plan - at at cost of £14 million.

Wait, how much???!!! How come Make were given the money to buy their 13,000ft² premises outright, renovate them and can still have change left over from £2 million while the renovation of the former Argos building comes to seven times that, and will still only have enough stalls for 27 of the current 43 traders?

Birkenhead Market

I’ve been trying to find out how big the Argos site is, it’s being reported as 33,000ft² but no amount of measuring on Google Maps brings me close to that figure, and according to this application to operate a market by a trader, Alan Featherstone, who entered into negotiations with M&S independently, only 465m²/5000ft² will be made available. As I was typing this, Wirral Council tweeted out a ‘behind the scenes’ video so you can judge for yourself. According to the application, M&S were amenable to the traders’ offer, however soon after there were vague reports that they had found alternative tenants, and the council urged Featherstone to withdraw his plans. We wait and see who the new tenants will be with bated breath…

There is a striking difference here in the way the council is treating the traders of Birkenhead Market and Make CIC, though they are both similar entities in many ways. Make were granted a large sum of free money to do more or less what they want with. They own the building on Argyle Street outright. Meanwhile, the traders are simply having things done to them by the council, their concerns are ignored and their needs are not being met - and yet it will still cost the council multiple million pounds more. Why can’t the council gift them a couple of mill to buy their own premises? M&S still own the lease on their site but the council owns the freehold. You can buy a bigger M&S in Middlesborough for just £700k, so it would surely still cost a lot less than £14 million for a substandard, undersized market. Or why couldn’t the council rent another of their many vacant properties to Make, and boost their dwindling reserves? This was how they operated at their previous site in the old Treasury Annexe.

So why such wildly different experiences for two very similar collectives of independent businesses? One is historic and traditional, the other is young and innovative and both have lots to offer Birkenhead; economically, culturally and socially. I can’t help but blame snobbery. Birkenhead Market (especially since purveyor of live lobster, Wards Fishmongers, left) caters to people on low incomes, from a deprived area, and has an ageing clientele. Make CIC is home to artisans and creatives, offers a single 2 hour knitting class for £40 and gets commissioned to produce temporary public artworks when Taylor Swift comes to town. I really hope I don’t sound too disparaging here: I think having somewhere in your neighbourhood where you can buy sourdough is one of the positive sides of gentrification and I really wish Make every success in their ambitious endeavours, but they’re being treated like a charity when they are quite clearly a business. I could write a whole separate post about CICs - Community Interest Companies - which straddle the line between private enterprise and the third sector to various degrees, but to stay on topic, while Make CIC are a good business run by good people, a positive addition to Birkenhead and not a faceless, profit-driven megacorp their “community interest” is frankly negligible. But we have councils that want you to speak the language of pseudo ‘social value’, offer nice photo opportunities for their websites and sell soy matcha lattes, rather than serve the plebs on benefits.

For more evidence of this two tier phenomena, compare the similar plight of Liverpool’s St Johns Market traders, unceremoniously and cruelly evicted without notice by Liverpool City Council for withholding their rent due to appalling standards, while the Isla Gladstone Conservatory, a limited company but run by someone with a history of leeching council money via a dubious CIC, has been allowed not to pay rent on its expensive wedding venue since 2019.

Finally, the most important question: what. the. fuck. are they spending £14 million on? Apparently you can build 118 new homes in Widnes for the cost of 27 market stalls in Birkenhead, and isn’t the whole point of market stalls that they are incredibly basic and cheap? It’s not like each one needs its own customer toilets and a stock room and the building is already there! What the fuck Wirral Council?

Now go and listen to some Half Man Half Biscuit