A SCHEME which helped promote and sell the work of artists and craftspeople from the Yorkshire Dales has ceased trading, leaving members out of pocket.

Dalesmade, set up in 1992 with public funding, included a shop in the Watershed Mill centre at Settle, near Skipton. It provided marketing and business advice to members and sold their products through the shop for a percentage commission.

Directors blamed changes in the lease arrangement for the failure of the shop and its eventual closure on December 1.

Steve Ottevanger, Dalesmade chairman, who runs the Stef's Models gallery at Reeth, was one of four directors who agreed to take over the running of the scheme when funding from Yorkshire Forward, local authorities and other public bodies ceased two years ago.

"Unfortunately the area we rented within the shop had a six-month termination on the lease and the owners, Edinburgh Woollen Mill, asked us to move to a smaller area of the mill," said Mr Ottevanger.

"They reduced the rent and at first things went well, but the area was just too small to generate sufficient sales to pay all the costs, such as staffing."

The situation was presented to members at the end of October, by which time debts to creditors were building up.

"Trading continued to decline and in the end we had to close it down," said Mr Ottevanger. "We met with members and put the options before them. If members had been willing to run the shop themselves we could have stayed open and traded out of the situation. However, there was no support for that idea from members for a variety of reasons."

Creditors, including members, the bank and Edinburgh Woollen Mill, had to be treated equally and each received a proportion of what was owed to them.

"One of the other directors was among the highest earners and lost probably the greatest amount, and I lost quite a lot also," said Mr Ottevanger.

Ann Bushell, a former Dalesmade member who lived at Marske and Richmond before moving to Skipton, said she was saddened to hear of the closure.

"Since the early 1990s considerable sums of public money from several local district councils have funded the Dalesmade scheme," she said. "What is left to show for all the public funding that went into it?"

She said that some members had received only 17pc of the money owed to them.

Mr Ottevanger disputed Mrs Bushell's claims that proper accounts were not provided by Dalesmade. "I can't speak for the time before I became a director, but in November 2003 we produced figures up to September 2003," he said.

"The closure is a bitter blow because the scheme worked so well for everybody until we were blown off course as a result of policy changes at the mill."

Some members had already expressed a wish to resurrect some sort of project to help Dales crafts people to promote and sell their items.

Dalesmade was established in 1992 by the Craven-based Dales Enterprise Agency. In 1995 its plans for a showroom and workshops at Hawes were rejected by the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority.

In 2000 it shared a £39,000 European grant with Brigantia, a similar organisation based at Thornton le Dale, near Pickering. Dalesmade and Brigantia merged in March 2001.