Melksham Town Council is to bring in consultants to help identify what the public wants from the Melksham Assembly Hall. Councillors agreed to budget £2,000 for the consultation to be completed within three months, at an extraordinary town council meeting held last Tuesday, 9th August.
At the meeting, councillors were due to discuss three options from Wiltshire Council for the future of publicly-owned assets in Melksham – including the Town Hall and the Assembly Hall. The meeting was due to be held behind closed doors, with the public and press excluded, but following protests, councillors agreed to hold the discussions in an open session.
Mayor Simon Crundell said at the meeting that whatever decision is made regarding the Assembly Hall, it will go out to public consultation. “There isn’t a single councillor around this table with the desire to be making decisions about such significant public assets behind closed doors and certainly while I’m mayor, that won’t be happening,” he said.
Councillors committed to keeping the hall
Councillors said they were committed to keeping the hall open or to providing a new one of a similar size.
Cllr Colin Goodhind said, “We made a decision some time ago not to close the hall, so that is off the table. The principle of a hall of that size has been accepted…This council did decide some time ago that there would be a significant cost to running the Assembly Hall and it is the sort of thing this council should be prepared to do.”
Town and Wiltshire cllr, Phil Alford, said the town council and Wiltshire Council need to work together to look at all the town centre sites – the Assembly Hall and Town Hall owned by the town council and Melksham House and the former Blue Pool and library sites, owned by Wiltshire Council.
“What we want to say to Melksham Town Council is this is your opportunity because if you’re interested, now’s the chance. If you’re not, that’s fine, we can move on.
“What we can’t do and what I will not accept is seeing the library and the Blue Pool there in the middle of town rotting away, boarded up, waiting for someone to make a decision.”
Councillors discussed the way forward and agreed to appoint consultants at a cost of no more than £2,000 to identify what the public wants and needs from the Assembly Hall and to report back to the council within three months.
Biggest decision
Proposing the council appoints consultants, cllr Jon Hubbard said, “We need to find out what people want; what does our community want; what does Melksham want. We need something really indepth. This will be the biggest decision this council makes in any of our lifetimes in terms of the amounts of money involved…let’s get some professionals in to help us make the right decision…
“This council has been talking about the doing something about the Assembly Hall for longer than I’ve been on the council.
“We’ve got no idea how we’re going to finance this thing; we’ve got no idea what it’s going to cost; we’ve got no idea what we’re going to build. We need someone who can come in and lead us through the consultation and help us build a project management plan to do the job.”
Cllr Phil Alford said, “In terms of consultation, I think it’s important we understand what people want, but we cannot be ignorant of the fact about what people are currently doing.
“What we do at the moment is not working; if things were working, we wouldn’t be looking at a budget deficit of somewhere in the region of £150,000, so we have to be mindful that the status quo is not the future… it’s not sustainable.
“While I think a consultation is important to find out what we want as a town, we also need to be conscious of the time. The clock is ticking. Let’s not kick this into the long grass and spend all our time talking; let’s get on and do something.”
Mayor, cllr Simon Crundell said, “From this meeting I hope we can think about the art of the possible… If we are going to fix the hall, we need to refurbish it to make it a modern facility people want to use; it could be we rebuild somewhere else.
“If we do nothing, we will lose that hall. Already we are faced with some very expensive repairs and without budgeting extra for it, there will be a time that we cannot afford to meet the repairs.
“I don’t think the ‘do nothing’ option is an option. That would be a way of saying, ‘We want to close the hall’…This is such a big decision, it will have to go to public consultation, it is a big process but I will be mortified if it takes multiple years. I want us to get the ball rolling, start budgeting and do the preparation work to secure that facility.
“It’s important we look at two things. One, what do our users want from the facility and two, what do our residents want from the facility. There is a £150,000-odd subsidy and we need to figure out why more residents aren’t making use of it.
“It’s a well-used facility and it’s clear from the level of public interest, there is a desire for such a facility and I think this council is unanimous in wanting to preserve this facility.
After lengthy discussion on the Assembly Hall, the other publicly-owned assets were not discussed at the meeting.
