OKEHAMPTON Town Council has come under fire for dumping thousands of pounds worth of awnings bought to enhance the market hall. Contractors for Cornish firm Merlin Cinemas have begun work to convert the market hall into a two-screen cinema. Supporters of the market reacted angrily after the town council chose to dispose of flags, pennants and canopies, purchased just four years ago, by consigning them to a skip at the recycling centre. Local resident Derek Godfrey-Brown said: ?It is a waste of money. They cost too much to be thrown away in some skip.? Mr Godfrey-Brown, who formerly ran the town?s farmers? market, said the awnings had been purchased in 2002 as part of a £42,000 grant from the European Leader II initiative to upgrade and promote the market hall. He said if the council had been interested in promoting the farmers? market, they could have done far more, for example, creating a mural of country scenes in the hall. But town clerk Don Bent said the items that were taken for recycling were old and faded and too big to store, ?We had nowhere to put them and so we asked around but nobody wanted them,? he said. ?You cannot just fold them up and put them in a tiny space ? the canopies are huge and we could not get anything for them as scrap unless we had tons and tons of scrap metal to get rid of.? Mr Bent said the town council had kept the banners and given some tables to the farmers? market.
