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Search the Public Notice PortalA "brazen land grab" by a Wiltshire town council against a neighbouring parish looks likely to backfire spectacularly at a meeting next week.
On Tuesday, July 21 a full meeting of Wiltshire Council will ratify the recommendations of its Electoral Review Committee, which has been looking at parish boundaries.
In January, Devizes Town Council, which serves 18,000 residents, told the committee that parts of Bishop's Cannings should be transferred to the town.
The council said that residents of parts of the "urbanised" part of the parish did not realise they were not Devizes residents.
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Areas to the north of Devizes town centre including B&Q, Lidl, and Devizes Marina are all in the parish of Bishops Cannings.
However, Bishop's Cannings Parish Council, which serves a population of 3,000 residents - the majority of whom live in the "urbanised" area north of Devizes - was in no mood to cede territory, calling it a "brazen land-grab," and challenged the move.
And when the Electoral Review Committee met at the end of March, it decided not only to let Bishop's Cannings hold on to the homes that were already built, and proposed new housing, but recommended assigning 200 homes at Lock Keeper Gardens to the parish.
Those draft recommendations went to public consultation and were finalised at a meeting on July 7.
Between the meetings, Aldi and McDonald's have submitted planning applications to establish branches in the parish, whilst Tesco is conducting a pre-application public consultation.
After the meeting Darren Bone, chairman of Bishop's Cannings Parish Council, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: "Considering that on March 26 we were in danger of losing fully 80 per cent of the parish and the entire semi-urban area to Devizes, this represents a complete turnaround."
Small areas were also proposed to be transferred between Devizes and Potterne, and from Rowde to Devizes.
The second proposal focused on Purton parish, with significant boundary adjustments suggested, including a potential land transfer from Lydiard Milicent to Purton.
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The committee considered feedback on these proposals, which had generated considerable response, with many disagreeing with the proposed land transfer.
A recommendation was made to transfer an area marked as 'A' from Lydiard Milicent to Purton, forming part of a new ward.
This also included a request to the Local Government Boundary Commission for England to align Electoral Divisions with the revised parish boundaries.
The final proposal involved a land transfer from Lydiard Tregoze to Royal Wootton Bassett, with adjustments to ward boundaries within Royal Wootton Bassett town also discussed.
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