It’s a county-wide policy that could radically alter the structure and locations of Council services in Marlborough.
In February 2011, Wiltshire Council launched its campus programme for local communities. It is gradually being rolled out across the county and is now coming to the Marlborough area.
In headline terms, campuses are new and/or refurbished buildings that join up different Council services and bring together other sector organisations.
At the next meeting of the Marlborough Area Board (Town Hall, September 24) a start will be made to what will be a long process with at least two public consultations.
Each Area Board has to set up a Shadow Community Operations Board (SCOB) to plan how the policy can be applied to their area. Once the campus is finished and running, the SCOB becomes a COB responsible for managing the campus and its services – more about COBs and management later.
In financial terms the investment in campuses is significant. Wiltshire Council earmarked £76,825,000 for the first seven areas to get the campus treatment: Corsham, Salisbury, Melksham, Calne, Pewsey, Cricklade and Tisbury.
Wiltshire’s policy is basically to consolidate services, its own and its partners’ such as police, fire and health services on a single site or if necessary on two sites in each area’s main town.
As a minimum all campus buildings will include: a single point of contact, community space, accessible community IT, catering facilities, personal care facilities, and office and meeting space for Wiltshire Council officers and other partners.
Work – including the construction of new facilities – is underway. Melksham is thought by some to have the most beneficial and successful campus plan so far.
When the Woolmore Farm site on Melksham’s eastern edge was proposed for the campus, there were such howls of protest that Wiltshire Council advertised to find a more central site. 
Melksham House – with its surrounding twenty-five acres of playing fields – was offered and bought by the Council for the bargain sum of £250,000.
The site is right in the town centre and is next to the Council’s Blue Pool. The downside will probably be the re-location of the town’s football and rugby clubs.
The Melksham House site will bring together nine facilities that are now in separate locations. And that highlights one of the main aims of Wiltshire Council’s campus policy.
The Council aims to reduce the amount spent annually on their diverse portfolio of buildings, offices and sites. And with modern buildings, they will be spending less on maintenance and repairs.
At the same time the idea is to make services easier for people to access – on a ‘one-stop-shop’. It also claims this policy will reduce the carbon footprint of its services by up to 40 per cent.
What could the campus policy mean for the Marlborough area? First, the town does not have many Wiltshire Council services: just the library, the Sure Start centre, leisure centre and further out of town, the recycling centre and salt store.
In addition the Youth Service has its base in St Margaret Mead and the Registrar and the Area Board manager use an office in the library one day a week.
One aim should perhaps be to have more Wiltshire Council officials working in the area – giving better access to services for this north-east corner of the county. It might be thought wise to locate a small team of social workers here.
Among other non-Council services that might co-locate in the campus’ offices could be the Citizens Advice Bureau. The local police could have a small base in the building – in Chippenham police are already operating out of council offices.
Perhaps a resurrected Tourist Information Centre will be high on the check list. And there might be advantages – not just economic ones – in moving the Sure Start children’s centre into a wing of the campus.
Where could the campus or hub be? The leisure centre is some way out of town and there is no easy way to expand it to take in other services. The obvious place to start may be the George Lane Police Station – well away from possible flooding.
With the recent reorganisations of police cover for the Marlborough area, the station is now far too big for the town.
There is hardly any land surrounding the building, but it does back onto the eastern end of Van Dieman’s Land – the site for the new primary school. How much of that five acre site will be used for the new school?
Another possibility is St Peter’s school which will become redundant once the new primary school is built. This Grade II listed building is owned by Wiltshire Council, but it too has hardly any land around it. Could it be connected to Wagon Yard which Wiltshire Council already owns?
However the delay in building the new primary school and freeing up the St Peter’s school building may scupper that solution.
Where can people in the Marlborough area look to see what sort of benefits a campus could bring them?
In Corsham building is already under way to create the Springfield Campus of new and refurbished buildings which will house the library, the Registrar’s outstation, the Springfield Leisure centre, the youth development centre and the Corsham Community Centre.
This campus is not far from the High Street and is already home to the leisure centre and community centre buildings – so people are used to getting to it and will not feel it is ‘out of reach’.
Pewsey’s campus will be split between two sites: one with the library and Bouverie Hall and the other with Pewsey school and leisure centre – connected by an upgraded footpath. Topping the list when the Pewsey area was consulted, was a modern leisure centre, public activity space, the library and provision for youth services.
Like the Marlborough area, the Pewsey community covers a wide swathe of the county. It is 30 miles from east to west with 30 villages and settlements.
Pewsey’s SCOB is looking at ways to bring services to some of its far-flung villages with “some form of mobile community service” – something that may appeal to the far-flung villages of the Marlborough area.
One point that is central to the policy is that the changes must benefit the whole area and not just its central town.
What happens first? The members of Marlborough’s SCOB will be chosen. These will include one of the Area Board’s unitary councillors, a parish councillor, someone representing young people and education, four representatives of ‘user groups’, one person representing the wider community preferably someone who can bring distinct expertise to the SCOB, and a Wiltshire Council officer (as a non-executive member.)
Each member will have an agreed deputy or alternate. The terms of reference for the SCOB are set by Wiltshire Council and cannot be altered.
The timeline for the Marlborough campus requires a plan to be ready by November 2014 so that Wiltshire Council can give it cabinet approval in spring 2015.
Before a plan can be drawn up there will be detailed consultations in which everybody in the area will be encouraged to take part.
This Council policy comes with a warning: campus facilities that house more services will have priority for future investment. An ‘outdated single service’ building in the same locality as the campus is not likely to attract further Council spending.
It remains to be seen how much controversy the campus process will cause in Marlborough.
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