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‘Secret’ parishes

MAY I say that, while agreeing with most of Des Morgan’s letter “undemocratic parishes,” in the last paragraph he appears to be criticising council workers for not providing anything like an acceptable level of services.

Any lack of council services is entirely down to council policy and not inept or lazy workers.

However, I totally agree with the rest of his letter which is an outstanding, articulate synopsis of the situation.

The whole set up is undemocratic we have been foisted with parishes, we have been foisted with undemocratic appointees to run these parishes, we are to be foisted with who knows what services, we are to be foisted with unbreakable contracts to run these services and we will be foisted with a parish precept (tax) that is well above the amount suggested by Coun Mary Martin on her tour of the town to sell us this undemocratic and expensive mess.

Anyone of us can attend any SBC council meeting and usually have a chance to ask a question, try doing that at one of these secretive “ shadow parish council” meetings.

I asked an appointed shadow parish councillor when the meeting was and was told that not only was I not allowed to ask a question but I couldn’t attend the meeting.

I find the whole business secretive and undemocratic with a second helping of secretiveness and undemocraticness piled on top.

STEVE THOMPSON

Norman Road, Swindon

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More homes needed

It’s a New Year, but still no imagination from Wiltshire Council. A new survey shows first time home ownership halving over the last 20 years. This news is no surprise to many young people, their parents, or indeed the elderly wanting to down size and stay in the communities they know and love.

We have an affordable homes crisis both to buy and rent.?

We need an all-Party consensus to tackle this problem. We also need to stop our market towns and their under-pressure infrastructure from being overwhelmed.

There is a way to achieve both desirable goals. I backed Nick Clegg’s call for the building of new, properly planned, sustainable garden towns and villages, with significant affordable housing.

Now the sites of 14 of these garden villages has been announced. This is the good news. The bad news is that northern Wiltshire? has no sites, nor indeed does any part of our county.

Places like the large, former Ministry of Defence site at Hullavington airfield,? just off the M4 and beside a main railway line to London, would have been an ideal for a “garden village” and there must be other sites in the county.

Wiltshire Council should have been working with the MoD to make this happen.

Instead, Wiltshire Council has failed once again, leaving residents both young and old frustrated.

The council’s failure also leaves market towns like Malmesbury and Royal Wootton Bassett under speculative development pressure with longer queues for doctors’ surgeries and ever longer queues on the roads.?

It is time for change. We need a council that gets its act together on planning, as with much else.

The local elections in May offer this chance for change.

DR BRIAN MATHEW

Liberal Democrat Prospective MP for North Wiltshire

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Picture was heartless

IN YOUR recent coverage of an ongoing trial regarding historical sex abuse by a man who, according to yourselves, is related to murder victim Alison Connelly, a photo of her was used.

I feel it was heartless and totally irrelevant and you were not thinking of the lady in question’s bereaved family.

I am very disgusted.

JENNY COX, Address supplied