A BRAVE new world of plastic-free and paper-free local government is on the horizon for Calne Town Council.

At a meeting of the Full Council last week, members made a commitment to both reducing plastic use and paper use.

They supported an ambition to make Calne a plastic-free town, by joining forces with other local organisations such as Wiltshire Wildlife Trust and persuading local business and retailers to avoid single-use plastics, spreading the plastic-free message to a diverse audience, organising community events and nominating two members of the town council to be part of a steering group of local stakeholders.

Members also endorsed a plan to spend £4500 on Android tablets, and a further £23,000 for a three-year contract with Modern.Gov (£9000 for the first year then £7000 for the following two years) to provide staff training, software and help desk support to work towards being a paperless town council.

The tablets would enable paperless working for committees and working groups. Each would be pre-configured with councillors’ individual email boxes and loaned to them till the end of their term of office, when the tablets would be reformatted and re-issued to any new councillor.

A report to the meeting explained that the council had endeavoured to reduce costs by trying to produce paperless agendas, but the current IT system had led to more and more requests for paper agendas and reports, increasing costs and time spent.

Many local authorities already use Modern.Gov, including Wiltshire Council, and parish and town councils are now being offered the opportunity at a reduced rate in comparison to their size.

The labour costs of agenda preparation for committees and working groups stand at £10,000 a year. Other costs were set out at £850 for paper (in this year to date), photocopying of over 100,000 sheets of paper (over 11 months) was £876, plus £240 to lease a franking machine and £1303 postage, year to date.

Coun Tony Trotman said: "I think this is absolutely the way for us to go.

"We must go forward with this."

Coun Robert Merrick reassured members the transition would not be difficult: "There will be a lot of training. They are very simple to use."