DEVIZES' long-waited new skatepark could be open by early next year after councillors agreed a site and set aside £20,000 to pay for it.

The town has been without a skatepark since February 2002 when the town council was ordered to remove the equipment from Hillworth Park after Hillworth Road resident Bill Richardson won a county court case.

Mr Richardson won the case on the basis that noise from the skatepark was a nuisance to him. His house is 30 metres away from where the skatepark was based.

Since then the town council has tried to find a new site that would be

accessible to users but not cause a

nuisance to residents.

The council has settled on siting the skatepark on the Tom Doyle Memorial Playing Fields in Green Lane. It agreed to set aside £20,000 to re-site the skatepark at a meeting on Thursday.

The site is undergoing noise impact assessment and a report on the result will go to town councillors in January for them to decide if the Green Lane site is suitable.

If it does pass the noise test the

council will submit a planning application to Kennet District Council soon

afterwards and if permission is granted the council hopes to open the skatepark in about April.

Simon Fisher, the town council's commercial manager, said: "The plans for the site are drawn up and are ready to submit to Kennet District Council subject to any changes we might need to make following the noise impact

assessment.

"If it proves that the site would be a noise nuisance to residents nearby then we would have to go back to the

drawing board to look again at that site or other sites.

"But if the noise impact assessment is okay and if planning permission is granted, we hope the skatepark will be built in time for the spring."

The council's preferred site for a skatepark is by the leisure centre but Devizes School governors, who own the land, are against it.

Mr Fisher said: "We do recognise the Green Lane site is not the best site in town. We are still talking to landowners to see if a better site is available but if there isn't then we will go ahead with the Green Lane site subject to the

results of the noise study and obtaining planning permission."

The site at Green Lane is leased to the town council from the Secretary of State for Health who has indicated he has no objections to the proposed skatepark.

The town council is employing the services of acoustic expert Alan Saunders, whose evidence helped Mr Richardson to win his county court case against the council.

The council will be using the same equipment which was at Hillworth Park and which is in storage.

Mr Fisher said they had responded to users' comments about the layout of the equipment and at the new skatepark the equipment would be arranged in the way the users wanted.

The main cost of the £20,000 would be the laying of a concrete base.

The total cost of re-siting the skatepark will be £25,000 and the town

council will apply to other organisations for the remaining £5,000 and does not anticipate any problems in raising it.

Oliver Morris, 18, is one of the town's skateboarders reduced to practising in a corner of the Market Place.

He is relieved to hear the town council has finally made a decision about the future of the skatepark. "We don't care where they put it as long as we can have our skatepark back. They have messed us about for so long,'' he said.

"The Green would have been the perfect place and I don't understand what people had against it.

"It was central and public. They have police cars and ambulances going past all the time so skateboards wouldn't make that much noise."