Agenda item

To note the minutes of the last COB meeting and to review Downton’s proposal.

The Chairman reminded everyone that three locations within Southern Wiltshire -  Alderbury, Downton and Winterslow - were considering some sort of campus or community hub project under the auspices of the council's campus programme.

The COB had met with the Cabinet Member for Campuses on 7 July to discuss the options for campus/hub provision in Southern Wiltshire. Whilst there was no  categoric assurance that funding would be available, funding might be available for schemes where there was a compelling Business Case.

Downton Parish Council had prepared a draft proposal for a scheme, the papers detailing this were circulated at the meeting, and are attached to these minutes.

David Mace, Chairman of Downton parish council introduced the proposals:

• Wiltshire Council’s Core Strategy has categorised Downton as a Large Village and a Local Service Centre for the provision of a good level of services to its surrounding areas.
  
  
• It also determined that 190 homes are to be built in Downton during the period 2006 to 2026. Based on developers’ plans we expect that most of these homes will be built within the next two years.
  
  
• Recognising the need for more accessible services in the growing community of Downton and its surrounding areas the Parish Council has examined the concepts presented by Wiltshire Council’s Campus Programme.
  
  
• Wiltshire Council has defined a campus as “a building, or collection of buildings and venues, in a community area that supports the services that communities have identified that they need, in easy to access locations”.
  
  
• In the case of Downton there are several such locations in the village e.g. the Leisure Centre on the west side, the Memorial Hall in the centre and the Library on the east side.
  
  
• In the expectation that Wiltshire Council would not be willing or able to fund, as I understand that it has done in North Wiltshire, the many £millions that would be required to bring all these facilities onto one site the Parish Council has based its thinking on more modest ambitions by retaining the existing multi-location approach and focussing its attention on the Memorial Hall at the centre of the village.
   
• Neither Downton Primary School nor Downton Community Pre-School are big enough to cope with the influx of additional children from the new homes.
  
  
• With key stakeholders we are working towards a solution to this problem that involves extending both the school and the Memorial Hall.
  
  
• The existing Memorial Hall contains a large hall, a stage, indoor and outdoor toilets and a kitchen / servery with adjacent refreshments area.
  
  
• The proposed extension will provide purpose built accommodation for an expanded Downton Community Pre-School on the ground floor and two sizeable, hireable meeting rooms on the first floor for community and business use. As such it has at some of the features of a Campus project in so far as the latter applies to a large village.
  
  
• We have it in mind that a Campus Room could also be designed into the Memorial Hall extension that would enable the provision of more accessible services from Wiltshire Council (e.g. Health & Social Care) and partner organisations such as the police, health and voluntary sector.
  
  
• The paper submitted to the Area Board explains the contribution that we would like to request Wiltshire Council put into this project from its Campus budget.
  
  
• In discussion with Cllr. Britton I believe that the business case needs some further refinement and research before the final version can be formally submitted to Wiltshire Council.  Cllr. Britton has kindly offered some assistance with this.
   
• At this stage I would like to ask for the support of the Area Board so that we may proceed to the next stage of refining and formally submitting the proposal to Wiltshire Council.

Decision

The Southern Wiltshire Area Board agreed in principle to support the Downton scheme, subject to more detailed work to finalise the submission.