THE people of Wiltshire can air their views on two crucial issues facing the county's future.

They can have their say on moves to increase recycling with the opening this week of a public inquiry into the Wiltshire and Swindon Local Plan, while a blueprint for development in the area for the next decade has just been published.

The new Wiltshire and Swindon Structure Plan will take the county up to 2016 and groups and individuals are being urged to give their views on the issues it raises.

Initial ideas for the plan have been put forward by Wiltshire County Council and Swindon Borough Council in a pre-deposit consultation a brochure outlining the major development issues.

It raises the spectre of allowing Swindon to spread into north Wiltshire but nothing has been decided yet. "No decision has yet been made about where growth outside the existing urban area should be located. This is your chance to influence how that decision is made," the consultation leaflet says.

Wiltshire's principal planner Georgina Dix urged people and groups to have their say. "Consultation is a key part of the process and it is important that people make their views known so that these can be taken into account when policies for the revised Structure Plan are being drafted," she said.

The idea is to concentrate growth in the Swindon Principal Urban Area, and at other earmarked major towns Chippenham, Salisbury and Trowbridge.

These towns are the largest after Swindon, offering employment opportunities, community facilities and services making them the best places for new homes, according to Government planning guidelines on sustainable development.

An extra 7,750 new homes will be needed in the county between 2011 and 2016, and about 4,000 of these will be built on greenfield sites.

North Wiltshire is expected to accommodate 1,700 of the greenfield homes, while Kennet will have a green field new housing allocation of zero.

Structure planners want to know if residents agree the larger towns should be centres for growth, while small towns including Corsham, Calne and Devizes are identified for much smaller scale development.

Questions relating to the future of Swindon are included, and Corsham Station is listed in the new schemes to be added to the revised Structure Plan.

The leaflet is available from libraries around the county as well as the county council and the borough council and comments must be returned by June 9.

The councils will consider the comments and take them into account when drafting the alterations to the Structure Plan.

Meanwhile, the public inquiry into the Wiltshire and Swindon Waste Local Plan, which is expected to last until July, opened on Tuesday at the Corn Exchange, in Devizes. Wiltshire County Council and Swindon Borough Council have jointly drawn up the plan to cover the period up to 2011, to guide the development needed to deal with the treatment of household and other waste.

A Government planning inspector will examine and report on all objections made during the preparation of the plan, whether or not the objectors have chosen to appear at the inquiry.

The Waste Local Plan sets out how Wiltshire and Swindon will meet the challenge of dealing with ever-increasing amounts of household rubbish.

Andy Conn, Wiltshire County Council's waste local plan team leader, said the plan emphasises the need to treat waste as a resource that can be reduced, recycled, reused or used to create energy, rather than as rubbish to be disposed of in a landfill tip.

To increase recycling, the county council and its contractors are expanding Wiltshire's network of household recycling centres, as well opportunities for kerbside collection.