Tower and Town, September 2017

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Marlborough Area Poverty Action Group

MAPAG continues to monitor and make efforts to relieve poverty in the Marlborough area.

We have had a busy summer thanks to grants from Tower and Town, St. Mary’s Garden Trust and the Area Board and we thank these organisations for supporting our work.

In July, we organised a coach trip to Bournemouth for families who might not otherwise be able to experience such an outing. Over the summer we have enabled children from less well-off families to participate in Camp Activate sessions at the Leisure Centre and piloted a project to enable teenagers to participate in sports activities run by Innov8 Sportz CIC. We will be able to give feedback in a later edition of Tower and Town.

We monitored the progress of the plans for the redevelopment of the Clarke and Rodway site and the efforts of the Town Council to object to the way Macarthy and Stone were able to wriggle out of the commitment to pay £330,000 for affordable housing. We have to look at the reasons why and hope that efforts to create a Neighbourhood Plan that reflects the wishes of Marlborough citizens can be used to defend future development plans and ensure they include affordable housing.

We have been keeping an eye on the state of the Youth Centre and are delighted that the Town Council has taken this on and are refurbishing the premises in St Margaret’s Mead over the summer.

We gave a presentation of MAPAG to the Area Board in January and fed into the consultation on the Joint Strategic Assessment process.

We continue to meet monthly to share information on projects serving our community. Amongst the speakers in the last year were Peter Brearley giving an update on the Foodbank and Blayze White, St Mary’s Youth Worker. Refurbiz provided a speaker reported in Feb T&T. Also, Sarah Johnson, the Outreach Assertiveness Officer for Wiltshire, talked about her work with homeless people acting as a support and spokesperson enabling them to access medical services and articulate their needs to service providers which is slowly decreasing the numbers of homeless on our streets. A previously homeless person spoke of his journey into homelessness and out again, which gave us a better understanding of the challenges homeless people face.

Four years since our first meeting we are now a group of people interested in issues that can make a difference to our increasingly unequal society. We have become an Unincorporated Charitable Institution and welcome newcomers who share our concerns. We usually meet on the first Monday evening of the month at 7.30pm in the Friends Meeting House in the Parade.

In the coming months we hope to spend time on campaigning issues and hope to arrange a screening of “The Divide”. We also hope to expand our reach into the villages surrounding Marlborough and would particularly welcome new members from our wider catchment area.

For more information contact Rachel Rosedale rachelrosed1@gmail.com

Rachel Rosedale