Dorchester town councillors claim they have been let down by the district council over the town's market.

They wanted to take over the running of the main Wednesday market, together with the car boot on Sunday and the stall markets in South Street, but were refused.

Now some fear for the future of the market as responsibility for running it passes from the district council to the new Dorset Council at the end of this month.

“It's not going to be a high priority for the new council at all,” warned town councillor and joint markets committee vice chair Molly Rennie at a town council meeting on Tuesday evening,

“Markets across the country are not doing well and we mustn't now take our eye off the ball,” she said, suggesting that the town council maintains a watching brief on the market as it comes under the Dorset Council.

“The Town Clerk usually takes a look around about once a month, and that's good, but we've got to act quickly if it (the market) starts to slip away.”

Cllr Susie Hosford told the town council policy committee that Dorchester had been let down by the district council over the market.

“They chose not to get this resolved before they ceased to exist and I'd like to express my disappointment in the strongest terms over how they have behaved,” she said.

For more than a year the town council had asked for the return of the Royal Charter to run markets in the town and had offered to take over the administration of all of the markets which operate in Dorchester, including occasional markets.

Said Cllr Alastair Chisholm: “Whether the district council has done it's duty to Dorchester is very, very doubtful.

“The market operators (Ensors) were keen to upgrade the market yet the district council failed over a number of years to give them a yes or no...this market will not be a priority for the new council yet it's highly important to the success of the county town. We have been poorly served by our partners at the district council,” he said.

The market has been run by a panel made up of district and town councillors with profits being shared 60-40 after a long-running dispute over who should control it. In April the main markets and the smaller street markets will come under the unitary Dorset Council.

On Wednesday morning the shadow Dorset Council was asked what its plans are for the market and what the future of the Dorchester markets joint panel is. We also asked whether the profit share would continue on the same basis, but between the Dorset Council and the Dorchester Town Council.

The council's public relations team replied to say it had passed the questions to the Dorset Councils Partnership, which will be disbanded at the end of the month and will, therefore, have no future input into how the markets are run.