FOR years Marlborough and District Rotary Club has been happily involved with the Marlborough Jazz Festival. Since 2005 we have been parking more than 500 cars on the Common and collecting change in our buckets to be spent on charities and youth activities in Marlborough and further afield.

The traffic around Frees Avenue, The Common and Kingsbury Street has increased massively particularly with the road closures during the festival and last year became positively dangerous. After the event President Rex wrote to Nick Fogg so the committee could put things in place to avoid repeating the chaos this year.

Rotarians had to step in and cool down irate drivers as four by fours towing horse boxes attempted three point turns while cars closed in on them from north, south and east. This definitely did not add to the enjoyment to visitors arriving at this event and contravened the terms of our insurance.

As this year’s event approached, the town council, having listened to our concerns, set up a meeting with Nick Fogg to discuss together how flow could be improved. There were many discussions with the town council, Wiltshire Highways and the police who supported Rotary’s position of ensuring traffic flow. This culminated in the need for some form of enforcement presence, all of which was fed back to the jazz committee. Their response was Highways’ double yellow lines and cones was all that was needed to keep traffic moving. The Jazz Committee chose to ignore the advice given about some enforcers’ presence required. In previous years cones had just been tossed aside by drivers who wanted to park causing traffic flow problems.

Therefore, it is with regret that, in my first week as president of the Rotary Club, I have had to withdraw Rotarians from serving this enjoyable Jazz Festival in Marlborough particularly knowing that some charities lose out as a result.

SALLY WOLFENDEN, President , Marlborough and District Rotary Club