Tower and Town, March 2019

  (view the full edition)

Marlborough Town

What have been the most enjoyable things about your mayoral year?

Definitely the community events when people come together to celebrate what is great about our town: turning on the Christmas Lights, the many events around Remembrance, and occasions like the tea-party in St Peter's in December which brought together so many who had some connection with that place when it was a church.

What would you say have been the main achievements of your time as Mayor?

I love working with the young - they're so important and the future of our town - so the Youth Centre and the newly established Youth Council I feel passionately about. Over £50,000 was raised to refurbish the Youth Centre, and I still work there every Friday evening as a volunteer when we have anything between 30 and 80 young people. We still need to do more with the place and get more equipment, but it's a start to provide the young with a place of their own. And the Youth Council is a way to give the young a voice and involve them in community action.

A role like yours doesn't come without its problems - what have been some of your biggest frustrations?

I get really cross about the moaning and negativity - people are all too quick to criticise the Council about not getting things done, but are seldom willing to volunteer to help. Local bureaucracy is sometimes frustratingly slow - I would love to see Wiltshire Council working more together with the Town Council to improve things. The housing situation in the town worries me - not enough affordable property and houses going to out-of-town people - and the closure of the police station seems very short-sighted.

And what about the challenges and opportunities going forward?

So much still to do - traffic, parking, housing, schooling and so on. Money plays such a big part in all these decisions, and I don't think that the authorities always make best use of the resources we have for the true benefit of the people of Marlborough. But there are reasons to be optimistic - the Neighbourhood Plan will hopefully start to improve things - and there's far less party politics in the Council and some really good working together to make a difference.

Lisa Farrell