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.