Council wants to open town centre office

12:00am Thursday 27th September 2012 in Andover

Ludgershall Town Council may open its own office in the town centre.

The town council is one of the most active in the area and owns the town’s car park, public conveniences, recreation ground, Jubilee Gardens, cemetery, playgrounds and allotments but is run from the home of the parish clerk. Ludgershall wants to prepare the ground so that a new clerk will be easier to find for the increasingly involved job when the time comes to make a new appointment.

Councillor Barry Crane, said: “The current clerk will not carry on forever and anybody who takes over will want somewhere to work.”

In the short term the option is likely to involve renting one of Ludgershall’s empty shops.

Councillor Ken Beard hoped the Memorial Hall could be used. Although space and disabled access issues preclude this option currently it could be a longterm possibility with some additional building work.

This might involve excavating ground to the west of the hall and adding modern accommodation on the side– hopefully financed in part by the sum given to Ludgershall by the old Kennet District Council in its final weeks.

Cllr Beard, a long-time member of Kennet, said: “The £300,000 was ringfenced for Ludgershall.”

However, some other councillors doubted whether Wiltshire Council would be prepared to release the money even though the money was quite clearly allocated to Ludgershall at the time.

Comments(1)

Mender says...
7:22pm Mon 1 Oct 12

Ludgershall did have a council office many years ago and I agree it does need an onsite office. I would strongly disagree to using any of the sparse land like the recreation ground for this. That land must be preserved as open land for leisure use. I do not agree that the existing memorial hall could not be adapted to include the use of a council office. I understand the building currently does have disabled access. If disabled access in not practical then I think the council need to consider if people actually need to access this office internally and if it not perhaps a serving hatch type of facility could be arranged with customers actually remaining outside and being served by staffs inside the building. The only part of the main Devizes council offices that are accessible to the public is in fact the reception desk. Whatever happen’s the Memorial hall needs to be put to better use and if it can sustain a library it should also be able to accommodate a small council office. We should also make certain the Wiltshire police do not attempt to steal any of the Memorial hall’s space and we know they have taken advantage of other buildings in the area like the Wellington Academy; they have their own budget without scrounging more of our council tax.

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