Nottingham Christmas Market will not reopen

Sunday, 6 December 2020 at 22:11

After temporarily closing the Christmas Markets due to unprecedented crowds, organisers of Nottingham's Christmas Market says it will not reopen.

It comes after pictures emerged of large crowds gathering in the city centre on Saturday 5th December.

The market officially opened this weekend, just days after the second coronavirus lockdown ended.

Nottingham and surrounding areas remain under Tier 3 restrictions which prevent people from gathering outdoors in more than a group of six people.

In a joint statement, Nottingham City Council and The Mellor Group said:

"Following ongoing meetings, including observing strong city centre footfall again, we have made a joint decision not to reopen Nottingham Christmas Market this year.

A wide range of measures had been put in place to ensure the market followed the Tier 3 guidance in relation to outdoor markets and fairgrounds. Plans were in place to control access to help manage the number of people entering the site at any one time and to continually monitor this throughout Saturday. However, numbers were too large to implement these effectively.

Like the rest of the country, the city centre saw significant footfall and was notably busier than anticipated. This began to have a knock-on effect mainly on areas surrounding the Old Market Square but also including the Christmas Market later in the day.

An increase in numbers of people around the Old Market Square after 6pm led to a decision to close the market early on Saturday.

Now that we have seen how busy the city centre was overall yesterday, we have taken the decision not to reopen the market at again at all this year.

We know this will be very disappointing for many local people who were looking forward to visiting and for the stall holders, many of them local, for whom this was a vital opportunity to trade in what has been an incredibly difficult year.

We wanted the market to help support the local economy and bring some festive cheer by bringing people into the city centre in a safe, managed way as part of the reopening of non-essential retail after the national lockdown.

Public safety and the safety of the stall holders has always been first and foremost in all the decisions we have taken.

The views being expressed both for and against are very important to us and we have listened carefully. The decision to go ahead with the market was not taken lightly nor has the decision to close.

We’re sorry it has not worked out."

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