Picture the scene, you wake up on a sunny Sunday morning, pick up the papers and a coffee before retiring to your own private terrace overlooking a beautiful and peaceful canal surrounded by large areas of open space.

You also live just a stone’s throw away from a state-of-the-art secondary school, Waitrose in on your doorstep and you have a brand-new local pub providing the ideal place to relax with family and friends.

Sounds fantastic doesn’t it? But this is the latest community the council is delivering in partnership with Barratt Developments plc through a joint venture company.

The Wichelstowe Joint Venture will deliver around 3,000 homes over the next 20 years and will have everything associated with modern, vibrant communities including extensive open space, allotments and conservation areas, sports pitches and brand new primary schools and a secondary school.

The first homes to go on sale are at what is now known as ‘Canalside @ Wichelstowe’ and the scene I described at the start of the column is what buyers were imagining when they visited the new marketing suite which opened next to Waitrose last Saturday.

It would be fair to say that the homes have been going like hot cakes and so far buyers have reserved 12 properties off-plan making it one of the most successful events to be staged by David Wilson Homes and Barratt Homes.

This is a great start to what we hope will be an extremely fruitful partnership with Barratt Developments plc because it will not only create great communities in Swindon, but the council will benefit from a share of the profits.

The council has contributed a great deal to the delivery of Middle Wichel by delivering the fantastic new district centre next to Waitrose.

This includes the recently-opened Deanery Academy, the Hall and Woodhouse pub just over the road and the restored Wilts & Berks Canal which is the centrepiece of this phase of Wichelstowe.

There is plenty more to come of course as the development ventures westwards and readers may have seen a couple of articles recently about the Wichelstowe Southern Access which will go underneath the M4 and provide an important route into and out of this major housing development.

The access route was a requirement of the planning permission for the wider Wichelstowe site and will also help us unlock 12.5 hectares of employment land enabling the creation of almost 2,000 jobs.

If you want to find out more about the plans for this highways scheme, which will require our contractor to divert the M4 to allow us to put the road in, there is a public drop-in event next Tuesday (October 22) between 3pm and 7pm at The Deanery Academy.

You may want to pop into the Canalside marketing suite while you’re there and imagine sitting out on your terrace.