Trevor Carbin Liberal Democrat

Older people in Corsham are invited to a special 'Music on the Move' event on March 4th, which will culminate in them being able to feed back on the services they would like to see provided for them.

Corsham Area Board, in partnership with Celebrating Age Wiltshire and Wiltshire Rural Music, are hosting the event with four drop-in stops along the way with music and entertainment.

Wiltshire Council has submitted a bid for £6m to the Department for Transport to help address traffic congestion in Trowbridge and improve infrastructure for pedestrians, cyclists and buses.

If approved, the money will bring a range of improvements to the traffic flow and public transport in the area, including:

Former leader of Wiltshire Council, Jane Scott, has resigned from the council.

She has been appointed to an unelected role in the unelected House of Lords so will step down after 25 years as a councillor, including 16 years as leader of the council.

Scott said: "This is a very sad day for me. It has been a great pleasure but also a huge privilege to be a Wiltshire councillor and to support the Bybrook villages over 25 years. I will miss my job but I am looking forward to my new role in Government."

Wiltshire Council is making changes to your kerbside recycling collection service.

Letters are being sent to every household in Wiltshire to inform them of their new collection day. Residents can also go online and check their collection day and print off a bespoke collection calendar at www.wiltshire.gov.uk/waste.

The government has announced its support to fund two major road schemes in Wiltshire: the A350 Melksham bypass and the A338 at Salisbury.

Wiltshire Council will develop outline business cases for the two schemes to enable them to progress to the next stage of development under the government's Major Road Network (MRN) and Large Local Majors (LLM) programmes.

A report to February's 'cabinet' reveals that the figures for the end of December 2019 show an overspend of over £10million. That's £2.76m on the general fund and £7.3m on schools. To be fair the council has little control over schools budgets, though the overspending on the general fund can be attributed to a lack of competence on the part of the Conservative administration.

On any day in Wiltshire 60 new sets of road works hit the streets, but as of April Wiltshire Council will require the utilities who dig up our roads to get a permit in advance of the work. Scores of companies have a legal right to excavate the road whenever they want to, and that won't change. However the new system will allow the council to know which roads are to be affected, and to take a more active role in planning and coordinating streetworks. There will be sanctions against operators who don't get their permit or who don't stick to their timetable. There will of course be exemptions for emergency work such as gas or water main leaks.

Great crested newts are protected by law, so when building takes place in newty areas the developers have to provide and manage bits of land where the amphibians can survive. Planning permissions include conditions to ensure that happens.

In practice the suspicion is that once planning is granted, the measures to protect the newts are not carried out particularly enthusiastically and the habitats decline.

Wiltshire Council will be fixing the traffic lights at the junction of the A365 and B3353 from 2 March for around five weeks.

The lights are clapped out, and as they need to be replaced, the council is also taking the opportunity to make other changes to the junction.

This will see the replacement of all the infrastructure associated with the traffic signals; repairs to the drainage on both sides of the A365; and the complete resurfacing of the A365 and B3353 junction and approaches. The junction will also be remodelled to incorporate a pedestrian phase.