A LOT can change in a week. A week or so ago it was looking good for reopening the public toilets beside the Bath Road car park and bus stop in Chippenham. 
The Wiltshire Council application for permission to demolish them had failed. The town council planning committee had objected. A large number of local people wrote heartfelt letters of objection to the demolition application. 
After that a group of Independent and Conservative town councillors secured agreement to start looking at ways to fund the toilets in collaboration with the BID and local business. It was agreed to ask Wiltshire Council to start preparing a short-term lease so the town council could take them over. I started talking to local businesses and had some encouraging responses. Progress was being made towards reopening a perfectly functional and much-needed local facility.
All that changed within a week. Wiltshire Council officers in Trowbridge not only insisted in putting in another planning application to demolish the toilets but wrote a discouraging email to Chippenham Town Council, saying that it would be very difficult to hand over the toilet block on a short-term lease, and that they anyway wanted to demolish it. 
This in spite of the published policy of handing over public toilets to town councils. 
Coun Desna Allen, the Liberal Democrat leader of the town council has always been opposed to keeping the toilets open, and she jumped at the opportunity of this email to stop the progress that had been made. 
There was a town council meeting at which key Independent councillors were away ill, and Coun Allen used the email to pass a resolution that the town council work on the Bath Road toilets should be stopped.
What a depressing story of personal agendas and local government civic vandalism. What a wasted opportunity for co-operation across the town to provide public toilets in the right place, and use a perfectly good building for that purpose. 
However, some of us have not given up the fight. I have challenged the Wiltshire Council decisions, and others will continue to make the case for the town council to be involved. 
In the meantime, local people have the chance to have a say by objecting to the latest demolition planning application. 
It can be found on the Wiltshire Council web pages by clicking on Planning and Building Control, and putting the number 16/11222 into the search box. 
Emails can also be sent directly to the planning department, quoting the same reference number - developmentmanagement@wiltshire.gov.uk 
Bad decisions only survive if good people remain silent, to rephrase an old saying.
CHRIS CASWILL
Independent Wiltshire councillor
Chippenham Monkton