A long-awaited artisan market in Witham has been dealt a blow after a prestigious operator pulled out of the project.

Charfleets, which runs popular markets in Dagenham, Barking, Rayleigh and Pitsea, decided it no longer wanted to run the stalls in Witham after long delays and negotiations about where it would be situated in Newlands Street.

Community leaders are still determined to trial a scaled-down market in May, June and July and have desperately contacted other providers to rescue the plans.

Rob Williams, chairman of the Marketing Witham community interest company, said: “Charfleets has said that it’s dragged on so long and they are not sure they will support us going forward.”

See this week's Witham Times for the full story.