SO Wiltshire County Council now proposes to move the County Youth Service to Devizes.
With the Department for Children, Education and Libraries newly formed, this hardly seems "joined-up" government thinking!
The county council enthusiastically talks of integrated services but, as is so often the case, just pay lip service to the concept.
Instead, over the years, services formerly centred in County Hall have been scattered around the county, primarily it seems on the Gimme principle whichever influential member of the county administration shouts loudest.
The Youth Service and Drama Library to Devizes, the Record Office to Chippenham etc. The efficiency of county council services is not a priority.
The fact that county council officers are primary users of the Record Office, who will have to make a 24-mile round trip to a Chippenham Record Office to consult documents, counts for nothing. Electronic access is not a viable alternative the county's records digitalisation will take some 300 years at its current rate of progress.
The covert, long-term strategy of the county council appears to systematically asset strip the county town, first of county services management and then its status as county town.
As for County Hall sell it as a hotel or conference centre and move to some tin shed in downtown Chippenham or Devizes!
The efficiency of county council services comes a poor second to the parochial interests of influential councillors and the pursuit of selling off the family silver!
A MILROY,
Trowbridge.
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