Hackney Council has teamed up with the Mayor of London’s Resilience Fund to call upon innovators to support local markets as the economy rebuilds.
Before the pandemic, local markets had already accounted for nearly 40 percent of vacancies by pitch-hour. Covid-19 has only exacerbated this shortage of market traders.
One challenge they face is that the city’s boroughs currently have widely varied protocols for trader applications. As some are also paper-based, they can take months to execute.
Market traders are therefore restricted in movement between boroughs and have been “unable to flexibly respond to supply and demand”.
The Public Markets Challenge aims to tackle this. Innovators are invited to pitch “scalable and transferrable” digital solutions that will increase traders’ access to commercial opportunities by easing the registration processes across London’s public markets.
Tris Dyson, managing director of Nesta Challenges, a partner in the Resilience Fund, said: “We are bringing together the brightest minds from community groups and innovators to help to solve some of the many issues facing London.
“In Hackney, we have a clear goal to support local traders, which will increase the resilience and diversity of London’s markets and ensure they bounce back stronger than before.”
Launched last week, the Challenge will end on 1 April.
Interested applicants can visit this page for more information.
Lead image is “London – Columbia Road Flower Market.” by shootingjaydred licensed under CC BY 2.0.
