Its Official - Marlborough is a friendly, historic, beautiful market town
We asked you how you'd describe Marlborough to a friend - the results are in!
Of 480 people surveyed during September and October, the most popular words were friendly, beautiful, historic and market.
The Town Council has the opportunity to apply for funding from the Wiltshire Towns Programme, which will see £1m each year until 2025 invested across Wiltshire into a range of different projects to attract customers and investment to Wiltshire's high streets, helping to support town centres as they continue to recover from the effects of the pandemic and rise to the challenge of online shopping. From time to time other funding pots become available and we also want to be ready to bid for these where appropriate.
Councillors have been asking what residents, visitors or business owners think would help Marlborough thrive. In September and October we ran a survey that asked for your thoughts about Marlborough town centre – what you like about it now, what would make it even better, and how you’d like to see it develop.
Thank you to the 480 people who took the time to reply.
Councillors have already considered all your suggestions and identified how they can act on them:
- Areas where suggestions are fully in the control of the Town Council – such as adding more public seating to open spaces, improving signage and tourist information – are already being added to our plans.
- There are some suggestions where the Town Council doesn’t have full control but may have influence – for example, improvements to traffic flows. We are already talking to partners such as Wiltshire Council to try to find a medium to long-term answer. The increasing amount of graffiti in the town also raised comments. While the Town Council only has direct control over graffiti on its own assets, we have committed to working with partners early in the New Year to raise awareness and seek a joint approach to tackle graffiti right across the town.
- We have to recognise there are some suggestions from the survey that cannot be addressed by the Town Council. For example, the survey generated calls for a low-cost retailer and/or clothing shops catering for children and men. The Town Council has no control over what shops come to Marlborough, or the mix of retail types on the High Street.
WHAT next
Councillors continue to meet approximately every 3 weeks, and they would like to broaden the scope of the working party so that interested parties - e.g. businesses, environmental groups, residents, architects – can join the discussions about drawing up a Town Centre plan. This plan could be ambitious for the long term and we really welcome your involvement.
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If you’d like to get involved in any aspects of the above, please email enquiries@marlborough-tc.gov.uk to let us know!