COUNCIL chiefs have vowed to get tough with stay-at-home stallholders who are damaging attempts to rescue Totton's market.

Totton and Eling Town Council has decided to expel market traders who regularly refuse to turn up in bad weather.

Town clerk Derek Biggs said: "We will have to say goodbye to people who muck us around and miss too many weeks."

Mr Biggs was speaking at a meeting of the planning committee, which decided to adopt a carrot-and-stick approach to the problem of missing stallholders.

Traders who attend most of the markets over the next 12 months will have part of their rent refunded.

Mr Biggs said: "We're doing better than many other markets, but stallholders are somewhat flexible when it comes to turning up in wet weather.

"Under the proposed new loyalty scheme, traders who attend most of the year will receive a rent rebate of up to 10 per cent."

Mr Biggs said the potential increase in the number of stallholders who turned up on a regular basis would result in more people shopping at the market.

"The loyalty scheme will be self-funding and in the long term will actually increase the income we derive from the market," he said.

The problem of absentee stallholders was highlighted in a hard-hitting report to the committee. The report said: "A problem has arisen in respect of traders who do not attend the site because of poor weather or other, unknown reasons.

"Many of them still pay their market rent, but it's not good for the market to have vacant spaces.

"Customers come to make a purchase and can't find the stall concerned.''

The market used to be run by Hughmark International, which rented the Salisbury Road site from the council.

Civic chiefs took over the operation of the market at the end of last year and vowed to breathe new life into the ailing attraction.

They stepped in after revealing that the number of stalls had dropped from 50 to 30 in the past few years.