CRUMBRIA: 21.02.2026
THE new council boss, allegedly in charge of Westmoreland & Furness Council, gave a less-than-impressive radio interview yesterday about its decision to shut Barrow Market Hall.
On Tuesday, with classic Clown Hall timing, the Lib Dem-run Council gave market traders THREE days to get out – heaping all the blame on “Elf & Safety” experts and a looming asbestos threat.
Forced into the media spotlight for her first big crisis since taking up the £188,000-a-year top Council job in January was Miranda Cannon, new town hall boss for Wokemoreland & Farcical Clowncil.
It wasn’t her finest hour. In fact, it was a lamentable debut. Cannon Fodder sprang to mind!
Her responses to an interview with CBBC Radio Cumbriashire were mired by hesitation, repetition and vagueness. She’d be awful at Just A Minute! Here’s a portion of her interview.
Verbatim!
“First of all, just to say I absolutely understand the upset that that traders feel. Erm. It’s. Er. We, as you’ve mentioned, the, the buildings have had challenges for a number of years.
Erm, typical these buildings of that, of that kind of era. Erm, they do have asbestos and other challenges, and we have been managing those really, really carefully, obviously, to support the health and safety of those traders and of the public.
Erm, we have been working with independent experts who’ve been regularly testing, er, and checking the building.
Erm, unfortunately, due to some of the ongoing, recent kind of wit, wet and poor weather, erm, weeeeee, er, we were finding more and additional leaks, er, and we, er, the experts have advised that they were concerned that this could cause asbestos to be dislodged.
Erm, we have been conducting tests, erm, on a very regular basis, and unfortunately, the expert advice, er, at the very beginning of this week, was that we needed to take rapid action from a health and safety perspective. Not, erm, not ideal, of course, but absolutely. You know, health and safety has to be our primary concern.
So, we were obviously busy working towards positive sort of plans, erm, and decisions to be taken, er. You know, in the coming weeks, actually, about the future of the Market Hall and Forum.
And we were planning, obviously, a much more, er, managed way of working with the traders, but obviously, health and safety has to come first, and we were, our hand was somewhat forced to, er, make sure that we could, that we could protect their health and safety.
So, so, I, I, absolutely understand the concern and upset. Erm, it’s not how we would have liked to have managed this, but obviously, as I say, we needed to ensure that everybody was safe and that was, and that had to be our primary concern.”
Well, we, we, haven’t taken any formal decisions about, er, the longer-term for the buildings, erm, our Cabinet are due to take some decisions in March, erm, about the way forward, and, you know, we were, erm, looking to exciting plans which we have been engaging the community around, erm, and on the back of that decision we would then have been planning to work with traders, depending on the outcome around those next steps.
So, er, you know, we, we, were heading in that direction, unfortunately, events have overtaken us, erm, on this. So, you know, we would much rather had, er, that much more managed approach to this, but, yes, as I say, health and safety comes first.
We’ve been obviously working really, really closely with the traders this week, erm, to provide that more immediate support, and we will be discussing with them in the, you know, in the coming days, erm, you know, how we support them in terms of continued, to continuing to trading, erm, and the options for them going forward. But, as I say, we, were, we were sort of, you know, primary concern is health and safety and taking those immediate steps.
Miranda Cannon on CBBC Radio Cumbriashire, 20.2.2026
You could call her The Erminator?
One wonders why these problems with the Market Hall and The Forum were never resolved under the former Barrow Borough Council, run for years by Labour stalwarts.
Given the scandalous legionnaires outbreak there 24 years ago, leading to the deaths of seven people and nearly 200 affected, you’d have thought Council leaders past and present would have put potential future health risks from Council buildings at the top of their priorities in Barrow, irrespective of cost?
These days, with no Lib Dem councillors based in Barrow and all the really big decisions about the town made by the all-powerful Lib Dem Cabinet in Kendal, unpopular moves such as kicking out Barrow Market traders are easy for the Council to make.
There’s absolutely ZERO electoral consequences on the Council’s leadership from Barrow voters who can’t return the favour by kicking them out of office!
The Council should now do Barrovians a favour by making public the “expert advice” they received.
Let’s see how big the asbestos risk really is for traders who have been permitted to work under it for, errr, decades?
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