Marlborough town council is still intent on setting up its own tourist information centre following Wiltshire Council’s dramatic decision to axe the centre in the town’s library as part of cost cutting measures.
Plans for an emergency TIC, based temporarily in the Mayor’s Parlour at Marlborough town hall, were rejected after the town council had voted a loan of £6,240 to a group of volunteers wanting to cater for tourists this summer.
But on Wednesday the town council voted to set up a Community Interest Company to run a new TIC next year and decided to seek out residents willing to play a role in boosting tourism in the town.
The initial aims of the organisation would be to find a permanent home for the TIC and prepare a sustainable business plan that ensures long term viability.
The go ahead decision also gave an opportunity for Tory councillor Stewart Dobson to set right the record following his previous comments that he was opposed to “handing over cheques to strangers seeking profits without a proper financial basis”, a reference to the two Wiltshire Council employees who ran the library-based TIC until it was closed.
“I believed it is important that it should now be minuted that the private individuals who have played such an important part in the TIC committee were not motivated by any desire to set up their own business from which they could profit,” he told fellow councillors.
Any future TIC employees will in fact be paid on a self-employed basis.
