Public markets
The challenge
The Mayor of London and Hackney Council are looking for innovators to develop solutions that will help unleash the entrepreneurial spirit of London's market traders and increase the resilience and diversity of London’s markets
The London Boroughs of Hackney, Camden, Tower Hamlets and Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. The solution would need to be easily scalable and portable to be operated across all London boroughs.
Local authority street trading/market teams, existing licensed traders and potential new temporary traders and entrepreneurs who would like to trial a business idea on a market or street trading isolated site operating under the London Local Authorities Act 1990 or the Food Act 1984.
- Prior to the pandemic local authority markets accounted for more trading hours than all other markets put together. They also accounted for 38% of vacancies by pitch-hour, in part due to a shortfall in recruiting and supporting professional traders able to make a viable living. The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically accelerated this shortfall and other challenges faced by markets and the wider high street.
- Each London borough has a different process for accepting trader applications which can be paper based and take several months to process - this can put many applicants off applying to public markets.
- No licensing facility enables traders to easily move between boroughs, and each trader must register in every borough that they wish to trade in – restricting how and when traders trade.
- There is low visibility of trading opportunities/vacant pitches across London and traders are unable to flexibly respond to supply and demand.
- Several local authorities have highlighted the opportunity that markets provide in supporting low barrier forms of local employment as part of their high street renewal and post COVID-19 recovery planning work. Many have seen a number of new traders pop up as a result of the pandemic. However, within the current licensing processes and systems it will become increasingly difficult for local authorities to act quickly and respond to meet the demand for new traders.
The solution
Create a scalable and transferrable digital service that creates a single gateway for trader licensing applications and that allows traders to access trading opportunities across London’s public markets by making it easier to register across multiple sites and boroughs.
Essential:
- A digital service that creates a single gateway for trader licensing application to public markets in London.
- A streamlined and easy to use registration and application criteria which if met, achieves trading license registration across all participating boroughs.
- Built-in supply and demand mechanism that allows traders to respond to trading opportunities across multiple markets and boroughs with ease, and enables local authority market teams to advertise market vacancies.
- A flexible solution that enables specific variations to the core criteria which can be pointed to specific market operators (including GDPR and license fee requirements
Desirable:
- Capacity to evolve to include other areas that local authority market teams are responsible for including tables and chairs, forecourt trading and busking licenses.
- London’s market traders easily register and move between markets in the pilot boroughs and thereby flexibly respond to trading opportunities and changes in demand.
- Provides access to thousands of trading pitches and locations across London and the ability to upscale and grow trader's enterprise across multiple local authorities with ease.
- Harnesses the broader value that markets bring to the High Street in terms of footfall, cultural and social activities and contribution to the local economy.
- Reduces a key barrier to new traders by making it easier to access low cost, low threshold and flexible opportunities into employment and entrepreneurialism.
- Scaling the solution across all of London’s boroughs to increase jobs and improve local economies.
- Number of London boroughs involved in pilot
- Increase in new trader applications
- Increase in new types of traders (products/services etc)
- Increase in occupied pitches on LA operated Markets
- Increase in new and existing traders moving between two or more local authorities
- Reduction in application processing time (measured as a percentage)
- Increase in local authority revenue
- Improved trader satisfaction
- Reduction in applications rejected owing to incorrect/insufficient info
Winners and finalists
Each team will receive £10,000 and the opportunity to work closely over five weeks with the Resilience Partner behind their challenge – which include councils, government agencies, BIDs and charities – to develop their solution. They’ll also receive specialised support in service design, pitch coaching, data usage, navigating government procurement processes and more. At the end of the first phase, the judges will review each team’s progress and choose one winner in each challenge, to be awarded £40,000 each and the chance to implement their solution.
OpenMarkets.London will open up London’s local authority markets to more traders. As London reopens from lockdown, the vision of Openmarkets.London is to maximise the vibrancy of London’s markets, as diverse communities of trade and shopping.
The project will make it easier to apply for a trading license across London’s local authority markets. It is currently a difficult manual process to apply to trade in local authority markets and individual applications are often needed for each market, making life difficult for both traders and local authority licensing teams. OpenMarkets.London will fix this problem with a single, easy to understand application portal providing access to the licensing team’s of each of the project’s local authority partners.
“We are beyond excited to be creating OpenMarkets.London with the Lord Mayor’s Resilience Fund! The vibrancy and diversity of London’s heritage markets and the unique communities of traders give London it’s personality. OpenMarkets.London is designed to help the markets and their communities thrive as we come out of lockdown. We see a great opportunity to partner with local authority market licensing teams to create a single portal to make it easier for traders to apply to trade in markets across London.” Paul Massey, Founder of OpenMarkets.London and Tabled.io.
Public Markets Portal is a digital platform that enables market traders to view active trading opportunities, apply for and renew licenses across all London boroughs, and manage various aspects of their license, such as the pitch number, manager and assistants.
The trader registration and approval process will be unified across the participating boroughs, with any borough-specific additional documents being requested during the individual market trading applications. This will enable the market traders to save time when applying for licenses in multiple boroughs. In the long-term, we envision the Public Markets Portal becoming a one-stop-shop solution for the market traders to manage various aspects of their business, such as equipment hire, joint marketing campaigns, etc.
“We are excited to take part in the fund, as this gives us an opportunity to create a solution to the real problem in public market licensing and immediately pilot it with real users across the four boroughs.”
Indi’s solution is a phased approach towards the automation of street trading for market operators, historically a time consuming and archaic process. The solution begins with solving the application process for London local authorities by consolidating and standardising the varying processes into a single format. This will be a secure digital platform covering the current legislation and legalities of the street licensing process across London.
“This is a great opportunity to finally unite London boroughs in one common goal: to make the street trading process quicker and easier so small businesses get more opportunities to sell their products and grow their business. This is merely the beginning of a journey we hope brings street trading into the 21st century and on a level playing field in all retail sectors. We bring a wealth of knowledge, experience and understanding of this sector along with the vision of where it needs to be in 5-10 years time. Exciting times ahead and we trust all London boroughs and beyond adopt and embrace this project”
About the partner
The London Borough of Hackney is the lead partner for this challenge. Other partners include a consortium of local authority market teams, including London Borough of Tower Hamlets, London Borough of Camden and Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and Brixton Community Market. Local authorities are responsible for the registration and licensing process for public market traders and have extensive experience in managing their local authority markets and in-depth knowledge of the communities they operate in.
- Capacity – convening a consortium of pilot boroughs who can provide expertise and access to existing systems, drawing operational expertise of The National Association of British Markets. (NABMA) and National Market Traders Federation (NMTF) and the strategic oversight and support of the London Markets Board.
- Staff time and expertise from LB Hackney, LB Tower Hamlets, LB Camden, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and Brixton Market Traders Federation.
- Access to market traders to conduct research, iterate and test the solution.
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