I wonder how many people in and around Calne are actually aware of the drastic changes about to be imposed on the town at the behest of Wiltshire County Council and North Wiltshire District Council?

And have those who are aware given any real thought to the chaos likely to be experienced while the changes are being implemented, or to the probable long-term impact of the changes on the life and commercial well-being of the town?

Since I moved to Calne 28 years ago the narrow part of Curzon Street has been the main bottleneck for traffic passing through the town centre. Now we are about to see this bottleneck made worse by the meddling of County Hall, whose contractors will next week close that stretch for several weeks while they make it even narrower and more hazardous than it has been in the past. The county highways planners also propose to add to the snarl-up by allowing parking in Wood Street, thereby restricting the flow of traffic even more severely.

The idea, it is claimed, is to force more traffic on to the bypass but the bypass, good as it is, only properly serves traffic travelling between Chippenham and Swindon. Residents of the south side of the town have to use Curzon Street to get to Sainsbury's and the Oxford Road area.

A link road between The Strand and The Pippin, which was in the original proposals for redeveloping the town when the Harris factory was demolished, would have solved the problem of the narrow Curzon Street, but the idea was thrown out years ago as being unnecessary.

In the next few weeks, while the work is being done, everyone will have to put up with long delays and diversions, and thereafter we can look forward to queues of traffic waiting to negotiate the even narrower Curzon Street, which I understand will only accommodate traffic flow in one direction at a time. It's a balmy idea which will soon put people off trying to shop in Calne at all.

Add to this North Wiltshire District Council's crazy scheme to charge for parking in Church Street car park, the only decent place to park on the south side of town, and we have a real disaster looming not only will people be put off shopping at the bottom end of town, but those who do want to carry on supporting the shops there may find that the staff are not there to serve them because they can't afford the all-day parking charges.

Our district and county councillors are supposed to look after our interests, so why have they allowed the planners to get this far with their plans? And why is no-one trying to make them see sense?

B A Heath

Calne