IT’S all systems go for the long-awaited Melksham campus.
Final plans for the £20million scheme were unveiled at Wiltshire Council’s Melksham Area Board meeting, held last month online, which heard that work was due to start early next year.
“It’s so exciting to see the campus on the starting blocks,” said area board chair, cllr Jonathon Seed. “We are on the cusp of getting our campus.”
The campus will offer a host of top-class facilities under one roof, including a gym, pool, sports hall, a library, café, and meeting space for the community.
Originally planned to open in 2014, there had been fears that the project was going to be mothballed or scrapped after such a long delay, but Wiltshire Council last night re-affirmed its commitment to deliver the project.
Suzanne Gough, the senior project manager, said the council had appointed Pelikaan Construction Ltd – ‘a fantastic specialist team’ – to build the campus. Pelikaan have designed and built over 1,000 leisure and sports facilities in Europe.
Suzanne Gough outlined some minor design changes which had been made following discussions with Pelikaan which, she said, would help improve the overall customer experience and buildability.
These included reducing the height of the sports and swimming pool halls, removing windows facing residential areas, the addition of a community/party room on the ground floor and addition of a dedicated cycle studio.
“Preparatory work will continue for the rest of this year, which will enable construction work to start on-site in early 2021,” she said.
She also outlined plans to bring the construction traffic through the Market Place rather than off the A350 Melksham bypass.
“Following detailed consultation with the council’s highways department, bringing construction traffic directly from the A350 is no longer considered to be the safest route into the site, and it would have caused considerable delays on the A350,” she said.
“Area board members have been consulted and support this approach.”
For more details, visit www.wiltshire.gov.uk/community-environment-melksham-community-campus
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