ANOTHER local trader has highlighted the need to act now over the future of the Cattle Market site in Abergavenny.

Steve Davies from Homes of Elegance has suggested that the local authority needs to make a firm decision over the town's future before an out-of-town supermarket gets planning approval.

Mr Davies did however express concerns about the loss of the town's cattle market.

He said: "We need to make Abergavenny vibrant again. Destination Abergavenny as a point of reference has come to mean something to visitors, but the town is failing in its appeal.

"We could transform the current cattle market into a really great farming asset with additional uses instead of a supermarket which would stop cash flowing into the town.

"We need to retain what makes Abergavenny unique and boast about it. We have a lot of independent traders in the town that need to be supported by local people.

"We have been dithering about for a good 12 years now and I think the cattle market site could be a great asset to the town. I feel with a bit of investment it could be 100 percent better than it is now. Once you've thrown out an asset like this it's gone forever.

"No town in Monmouthshire has more potential than Abergavenny to make itself more unique than anywhere else in the region."

Divided opinion

Meanwhile Keep Abergavenny Livestock Market campaigners group have admitted that the ongoing saga over the future of the farming facility is a highly charged issue, which divides opinion.

The campaigners admit that all the interested parties share the same objective of wanting to regenerate Abergavenny as a vibrant and thriving town, but the groups differ greatly on how best to achieve it.

Although KALM members are not opposed in principle to the Morrisons scheme they emphasise that they are opposed to losing the Cattle Market, which would eliminate livestock trading in the town.

Spokesman for the group Barry Greenwood said: "Farming and livestock trading has been at the heart of the Abergavenny economy for generations and to lose this would have serious adverse consequences for the town which nobody has taken the trouble to investigate in depth.

"Abergavenny has serious ambitions to become a major food destination for visitors and tourists, and already has some excellent food producers, food shops and restaurants, a farmers' market and of course the nationally famous food festival.

"Food tourists don't travel in order to visit supermarkets: they travel to places with a credible food culture. It is one of the contradictions of Monmouthshire County Council's policy that they are keen to promote Monmouthshire as a food tourist destination, with Abergavenny arguably the jewel in that particular crown.

"But the authority is intent on ripping out the one unique, priceless asset which gives Abergavenny a real food town edge over rival food towns in other counties.  Once the livestock market has gone, nothing will ever come close to replacing it, and this will make Abergavenny's credibility as a food town with real connections to the land much harder to achieve." 

"The local authority has said that modernisation of Abergavenny's livestock market is impossible. However, towns such as Melton Mowbray have kept and modernised their livestock markets into multi-use sites, which serve the whole town, not just the farming community. KALM has always had this vision for our livestock market.  If one town can do it, so can Abergavenny."

"It's not too late to re-think our livestock market's future. 

"What is needed first is a proper feasibility study, with costings, on how to refurbish the livestock market with these all-inclusive farming, town, community and tourist objectives in mind."