A DISPUTE has broken out between Westbury Town Council and Heywood Parish Council over the community governance review – a process to review and make changes to parish boundaries.
Suzanne Wickham, the Wiltshire councillor for Ethandune (the areas surrounding Westbury including Heywood), says that comments made by Westbury Town Council during this process damaged the reputation of Heywood Parish Council and has asked for the town council to rescind their comments. Westbury Mayor cllr Mike Sutton, on behalf of Westbury Town Council, says he does not accept this and instead has suggested a private conversation should take place instead.
Cllr Suzanne Wickham said, “As many of your readers will know Wiltshire Council is conducting a community governance review. Westbury Town Council submitted their proposals which included subsuming Heywood Parish Council into Westbury Town Council. Heywood Parish Council rejected this proposal and submitted an alternative proposal to the community governance review committee.
“During this process Westbury Town Council submitted documents to the committee contained false and inaccurate information. These accusations relate to: mismanagement of children’s play area at Hawkeridge Park and allegations of bribes to parish councillors to keep the park closed, Heywood Parish Council struggling to manage its amenities, suggestions that there are plans to build houses on the play area, and stating that Heywood Parish Council did not object to the Northacre Renewable Energy Ltd application for the incinerator. Westbury Town Council stated that the evidence they submitted included comments from residents on Facebook. Heywood Parish Council refute all the above statements.
“I spoke at the committee meeting regarding my concerns that these false statements could result in reputational damage to Heywood Parish Council and its councillors, and that I would request that Westbury Town Council rescind the false and inaccurate information and publish this statement on their website, and in this newspaper. I wrote to Westbury Town Council, with this request and they replied that they had reviewed their comments and stood by them as accurate and based on evidence.
“I have serious concerns that the information that Westbury Town Council has published, which is false and inaccurate, could result in the reputation of both Heywood Parish Council and individual councillors being damaged. I would again urge Westbury Town Council to retract these statements as reproducing comments from Facebook has no evidential value and these statements are clearly damaging to the reputation of Heywood Parish Council and its councillors.”
In response cllr Mike Sutton of Westbury Town Council said, “Westbury Town Council does not wish to have any friction with neighbouring parishes and has offered many times to sit down and have a mature conversation, so it is disappointing to see that our offer has not been welcomed.
“The governance review undertaken by Wiltshire Council’s governance review panel was a long and difficult process and Westbury made representations as to why the taxpayers of the town should not be penalised. Unfortunately, we were not successful in our representations and the governance review panel were minded to recommend to Wiltshire Council to transfer some areas of Westbury to Heywood village parish.
“We do not accept the comments made by Heywood parish and would be pleased to answer them privately. We do not intend to have further public conversations regarding a process that is now complete, and Westbury Town Council prefers to concentrate on the events and services that we continue to offer to our residents and neighbours.”
Final recommendations will be submitted to Wiltshire Council in October. For more information visit: https://shorturl.at /rHKMW
