A FEE paid by companies taking part in a Wokingham Borough Council-run virtual Christmas market goes towards administration costs.
Cllr Stuart Munro, the executive member for business and economic development, explained the need to make the charge while responding to a question posed during a virtual meeting of the council’s ruling body, held on Thursday, November 27.
Cllr Imogen Shepherd-DuBey, who is both a borough councillor and leader of Wokingham Town Council, wanted to know the justification of the fee.
“I can see that Wokingham Borough Council has decided to start up a Virtual Christmas Market for small local traders on a Facebook feed, for which they are, rather shockingly charging £20-£50 to use,” she said.
“Considering that there is clearly no website development and this looks like a very minimal service, I am wondering what value it offers.”
She also wanted to know what Wokingham Borough Council was doing to invest, promote and support all virtual businesses in the area.
Cllr Munro said that support included contributing to the Love Wokingham project, sharing around £19 million of business rate relief during e pandemic, along with £20 million of business grants.
The council had also offered website promotion of businesses offering virtual services, promotional signage to encourage safe shopping, as well as social media promotions of the same.
The Virtual Christmas market, he continued, was launched after a planned event had to be cancelled due to coronavirus.
“To help support local businesses that would have been involved in the market we decided to take the market aspect virtually,” he said.
“The admin charge was introduced so the page could be managed to allow only those stallholders entered to post, which prevents a build-up of hundreds of posts per day you see in other market groups.”
Stallholders received advice on how to create an eye-catching post, statistics, and advice on when to post. The market also runs for 38 days, one of the longest in the country.
“This all takes away all the behind the scenes leg-work a small business would normally have to do allowing them to focus solely on their products and the selling,” Cllr Munro said.
“Consumers and stallholders are primarily from within the Borough, not just Wokingham town centre or the larger towns, but we also welcome consumers from surrounding areas to help the local business grow and access a new consumer group other than those local to them.
“The secondary aim of the market alongside supporting local business and creating some Christmas cheer in some tough times is to also extend the reach of these businesses by giving them a platform to interact with people and make connections that will hopefully extend and help their business going into 2021.
“It should also be noted that reaction to the Christmas Market has been extremely positive and we have had no complaints from the businesses that have signed up.”
A follow-up question asking for the revenue generated was unable to be answered at the time of the meeting.
