Car boot sales team prepare for legal fight

Organisers of car boot sales in South Staffordshire are taking legal advice over council plans to invoke ancient laws to scale them down.

Market Promotions organises two sales off the A460 Cannock Road at Featherstone and off Mill Lane, Shareshill, near Wolverhampton. More than 2,000 customers and 150 traders flocked to the sites yesterday.

The sales were the first in the area since councils said they were considering tightening regulations. Planning laws allow organisers to hold 14 separate events in one year on any one site but South Staffordshire, Wolverhampton and Dudley councils are examining market charters they believe may give them powers to restrict sales.

Dudley is considering regulating one at Himley Hall and Park.

Market Promotions bosses Kevin Brown and Steven Edensor said there was huge demand for cheap goods which only car boot sales could meet. "We are going to seek some legal advice," Mr Brown, aged 49, said.

"We are not sure the market charters can be used against us on Sundays. We are supplying something that the public want, and they come from miles and miles to get it. We must have had more than 1,000 cars here yesterday, and the weather's been awful.

"People are moaning about the amount of traffic but we put out more than 200 cones each time to stop people from parking outside the fields, and when we are finished, we clear up so the fields are spotless."

Mr Brown and Mr Edensor, 39, have been running the Shareshill car boot sale since 1988 and the Featherstone sale, in Dark Lane, since 1992. Trader Darren Lello has been selling electrical goods at Shareshill for the last decade. The 36-year-old, of Goscote Lane, Pelsall, said: "You only have to look at the number of people who come down to see it's a popular event."

Residents in Featherstone and Himley have complained of roads being brought to a standstill, and South Staffordshire MP Gavin Williamson announced last week that district council chiefs had asked Wolverhampton and Dudley councils for help.

Both local authorities have market charters granted in the 13th Century giving the ruling nobles the power to ban markets from setting up near any of their own retail markets. South Staffordshire Council spokes-man Jamie Angus confirmed that talks had started "regarding the use of market charter powers in helping to regulate car boots".