The man who runs Kingston market’s oldest stall has warned that plans to give the ancient Market Place a major facelift fail to address issues that have forced other traders out of business.

Vehicles were first banned from Market Place in February 2008, and councillors at the Kingston town neighbourhood committee on January 20, backed plans to use £50,000 from Transport for London to create further improvement plans.

Options include replacing the brick paving with stone, enlarging the fountain, increasing public seating and moving street lights and signs to create more open space.

Tim Meads, who has worked on the Websters of Kingston fish stall for 30 years, said expensive town centre parking was driving customers to out-of-town supermarkets, and the money would be better spent on a new car park.

He said: “Rather than the water fountain, which costs a fortune, they should have a car park. What I would like to see is a big car park. That would attract a lot of people, and with the recession we need that.”

Last year, Market Place was designated one of 36 open spaces to benefit from the Mayor of London’s Great Spaces initiative, which stated: “There is a need for a comprehensive strategy to safeguard and enhance the quality of the space, and improve linkages to the High Street and the river.”

Traffic engineer Paul Drummond said: “We have removed the traffic which gives us additional space. We want to get urban designers to design an area that is not cheap but will be appropriate for an ancient London borough.

“It is going to be a big job when it comes about and we are going to take time and trouble but we are not going to remove traders from the area.”

Committee chairman Councillor Chrissie Hitchcock said: “I wanted to get the brick pavement out of it and get all the paving the same so it leads into Memorial Square. That was the long term ambition. The problem was the cars, and until I could get the cars out we could not really push much further with that.

“Because the cars were there the seating had to be in the square but now we could open it out. We could move the seats out of the square, and utilise the space more.”

Any changes are unlikely to be implemented until 2011-12.

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