Welcome to the Towards One Council Website, a one stop shop for all news relating to the transition to one council for Wiltshire.

The new Wiltshire council is committed to ensuring that local people have the opportunity to get involved in making decisions about the areas in which they live. This means that local communities will be able to challenge local service delivery and have a say in how local budgets are spent.

To achieve this vision, area boards will be set up in Wiltshire’s communities.  These powerful new boards will form a key part of the decision-making structure of the new Wiltshire council. They will bring together the new council’s services, key partner agencies such as the police, health and community partners and local people.  The boards will have wide ranging powers to tackle local issues, and budgets to promote local projects run by local people.

The role of the board will be to take decisions regarding local services and to help shape services in response to local needs.

For more information see Area Boards in a nutshell.

Pilot Area Boards

From now until the new Wiltshire council is formed on the 1st April 2009 an innovative approach is being tested to make sure that local people can have a say about local issues. This will be done through pilot Area Boards.

These boards will test new ideas and new ways of engaging local people by working with real local issues. They will also work with the local community partnerships to identify local priorities for action.  This will mean that when the new unitary councillors are elected in 2009 the new system will be ready to go.

Twelve areas have been chosen to develop and test area boards. Local councilors and parish councils will be leading the work supported by a dedicated team of officers.

How can you get involved?

At this stage we want as many people as possible involved in helping to develop this new system. There are many ways you can get involved – attending pilot board meetings, suggesting issues for consideration by the boards, getting involved in local events and more.

The links below give more detail on the the pilot boards: