WESTBURY has a right to feel ‘cheated’ out of a campus after volunteers were told that money was no object when drawing up plans for the town, a project member has told White Horse News.
The leader of the campus working group, Brenda Pyne, has spoken out and said that volunteers felt ‘dismayed’ and felt they had wasted their time after learning via the White Horse News that the project was dead in the water.
Another member of the working group has also been angered at the way the project was handled while a Westbury Swimming Club coach says Westbury has been misled and any money spent on Westbury Pool has not been a refurbishment but simply essential repairs and maintenance.
“Westbury has a right to feel short-changed and cheated out of a campus, because Wiltshire Council has not delivered what it promised,” said Brenda Pyne. “The first we heard of this was through the White Horse News, which was disheartening and showed a real lack of courtesy after all the work the group has done.”
It was revealed last month that a campus proposal put forward by the working group had been abandoned, and that the council would instead be transforming the library into a community hub.
Brenda, a former swimming club volunteer and ex-town council employee continued, “The library hub scheme is crumbs from the rich man’s table. We knew budget would always be an issue but, despite asking, we were never given an idea of how much money we had to work with and were told not to worry about the budget.
“Since then, we’ve seen nearly half of the £80million spent on Corsham and Melksham alone. We could have done a huge amount with something like £5million.
“The spending was out of control and something like this would never be allowed to happen in the private sector; why should it happen at the council?
“We’re told that the town benefited from £0.7million of refurbishments at the swimming pool, but most of that went on essential maintenance.
“I think Westbury has missed out, it has been let down, and it’s a real shame that an opportunity to do something so good for the town has been missed.”
Another member of the working group, Bill Jarvis, wrote to the White Horse News expressing his anger at the way he has seen the project unfold since joining three years ago.
Bill wrote, “We were guided by a council officer to develop the ideal solution for Westbury and were told repeatedly that we should go for what the town really wanted. We challenged the statement many times but were told not to worry about what the costs might be.
“We looked at Melksham’s planned campus, which was extremely grandiose, and it gave us confidence that the council really was committed to providing the best for every area. We presented our plans to Westbury Area Board in December 2014. The councillor responsible for the campus programme said that they were struggling with financing the live campus developments, but that ours was viable and the best presented of all campus schemes.
“The campus team was then restructured and, after further meetings, the process froze; we were left with no guidance from the area board and only heard about the cancellation of the development when we read it in White Horse News.
“In hindsight the campus idea was bound to fail because Wiltshire [Council] was overambitious and overspent early on ‘dream’ campuses. The programme was poorly run from the start and got worse over time; the budget was then badly managed, downscaled and finally abandoned.”
Stephen Pyne. coach at Westbury Amateur Swimming Club, said “Councillor Jerry Wickham states that Westbury has had £0.7million spent on refurbishments to Westbury Pool in the last three years. This is very misleading. What was done was essential repairs and maintenance…Refurbishment suggests improvement. But really these were essential repairs.
“Councillor Wickham says we should be grateful. We have had the repairs done, our pool is open and the pool hall walls have been painted! Westbury only wants to be treated fairly compared to other towns; we need our pool refurbished right through like Corsham and Durrington. I believe Westbury has missed out in a big way.”
Bill Jarvis’s and Stephen Pyne’s letters can be read in full on our letters page on page 17.
Brenda Pyne said one of the biggest failings was the council’s communication, and that volunteers should have been kept better informed.
She explained, “We knew money was tight and we even asked around Christmas-time what was going on – they must have known then, but didn’t tell us.
“Myself and the volunteers had worked on the project for up to four years, and it was a lot of work at times. We really thought we could help local people, and we’re disappointed it fell through. We deserved to be told the project was struggling, and the council should have been more honest and open throughout.
“Westbury has shown that it needs investment, the population is growing rapidly and there are a lot of young people who we need to support. I think people feel that Westbury doesn’t get its fair share from the council and the campus failing will only reinforce that.”
