A COMMUNITY buying scheme launched in the Marlborough area this week aims to offer householders cheaper oil for domestic heating and help the environment to boot.

Wellieboot is a limited company based in North Cadbury, in Somerset, and has struck a deal with an oil distributor covering Wiltshire, Dorset, Somerset and North Hampshire.

Managing director Chris Clark said that Wellieboot, which has a pair of green Wellingtons as its logo, plans to bringing cheaper oil to homes for heating.

He said: "If there are ten properties in a village each buying heating oil and it is all purchased and delivered on separate days, there will be ten separate visits to the village by an oil tanker.

"All those individual visits jam the country roads and are not cost-effective."

Wellieboot's deal with the oil supplier is to deliver the fuel to about 300 villages on a fortnightly basis. There is a top-up scheme so that domestic heating oil tanks are filled regularly at group-buy prices.

Mr Clark said: "With the crisis in farming, anything to give rural villages a helping hand is important.

"Life in villages is tough and anything that can be done to breathe life into rural communities and make things easier has to be worthwhile. That is what Wellieboot is all about."

Fellow director Archie Montgomery said: "We are planning to move into other services of benefit to rural communities, such as septic tank emptying. We have plans to open a Wiltshire office in Amesbury."

The company operates a website at info@wellieboot.co.uk where orders can be placed and details can be found of future delivery dates.

Mr Montgomery said: "According to the latest Countryside Agency survey there is a growing lack of vital services to country areas.

"Most villages have no shop, a third of rural parishes still do not have a bus service."

The company says that the scheme will mean fewer vehicles making fuel deliveries along country roads.