Tower and Town, March 2019

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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

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