AMBITIOUS plans to bring some much-needed leisure facilities to Dilton Marsh will start to come to fruition this year, with £10,000 in the kitty for developments.
The Dilton Marsh Leis-ure Development Group was formed to address a lack of leisure facilties for residents in the village. They have a number of projects they wish to bring to the village, including a fitness trail, youth shelter, toddler play area and improvements to the playground, and ultimately a multi-use games area.
The parish council own a playing field off Alan Powell Lane and the group has plenty of ideas on how this land, with the approval of the parish council, could be used to bring better leisure facilities to the village.
The group has received £5,000 from Dilton Marsh Parish Council, which has been matched with another £5,000 from the Westbury Area Board. Tony Coutts-Britton of the DLDG, explained that the group will be meeting in the near future to discuss what the first phase of projects can now include.
He explained, “One is a youth shelter, which would be open sided, but with benches so people can sit down and chatter and sing or play music. We thought we could have a timber fitness trail with bars you can swing on, ropes, etc, that would appeal to all age groups.
“We haven’t got a toddler play area, and that wouldn’t cost much. We have got an outdated playground, which we want to relocate, with a modern base and change some bits of equipment so it’s safe – that would be for children up to the age of 12.
“Our big aim is a multi-use games area, which is a hard surface with all the lines for basketball, soccer, etc – that’s going to cost mega bucks, but all this is achievable.
“This will be a progressive project, it won’t all be finished in a year or two, but we do have £10,000 for 2012.”
It is a project which the group feel is important to the area. Tony said, “Dilton Marsh is very high on the list of areas of social deprivation in Wiltshire. We’ve got a very strange demographic mix, we have got a huge social housing area where you can easily see how unemployment has its effect on the community, and then there are houses that are worth around £1million.
“Some years ago the parish council bought the field and turned it into a leisure ground. It’s got one football pitch and the football club has a couple of mobile trailers and that’s all we’ve got. So we formed the group to go out and generate funds and put ideas down, and started thinking about what we can do to appeal to all age groups.”
