A ‘RUN down’ market is being restored to its former glory after being taken over by new owners.

A consortium of five business people have bought Little Lever Market and are already beginning to revitalise its fortunes.

The market has been struggling to attract traders and customers for several year.

But since new owners took the reins in mid-September extra stalls have opened and others have signed up and are set to move in.

New traders at the market include a carpet shop, a blinds shop and a dry cleaning business.

Some of the existing shops now plan to expanding, while the café is now under new ownership and renamed Lenny’s.

Majid Hussein, one of the five Oldham-based investors, said the group had used social media to promote the market and reached out to the community for support.

He said: “What we’ve done is bring some new traders in and got a good mix of them to get the public coming back. Within a month we’ve really turned it around. If you go in there the traders will tell you it’s a completely different place now.”

And Mr Hussain was keen to stress the role the village community had played in bringing the market ‘back to life’.

He said: “They have come and really supported it and we are really grateful to the community of Little Lever for that and for coming forward with ideas and suggestions. If that continues we can only go from strength to strength.”

He added that villagers, particularly the elderly and those without transport, were delighted by the market’s new lease of life.

“They are really happy to see the new businesses coming in, a lot of people don’t have transport to travel out and this has made it a lot easier for them,” He said.

“We have had phenomenal feedback through Facebook and people visiting us.”

Mr Hussain and his fellow investors were seeking a new challenge and found that Little Lever fitted the bill perfectly.

He said: “We were looking for an opportunity in the north west and saw this place and felt it had huge potential.

“There’s a good community spirit . Some of the stall holders encouraged us, too, and told us it had huge potential so we went with it.

“We wanted to do something different and this place looked like a great opportunity that ticked all the boxes for us.”

The numbers of people visiting the market are already on the rise and Mr Hussain is confident things will continue to improve.

“We are getting a good 200-300 customers during the week and on Saturday it’s up to about 500,” he said.

“It’s probably gone up by 50 per cent already but we are confident we can double the footfall from previous years.

“We are really excited about it and we have had such a good response in Little Lever we are looking to see if we could do something else in addition to this. We are telling all our contacts about the huge potential here and how good the people. We’re trying to get other people to come to the village and help open other businesses in the area.”

And with the traders and customers returning to the market Mr Hussain said the next stage will be improvements to the appearance of the market hall building.