SUPPORT AND ACTION REQUIRED FROM ZEALS RESIDENTS
Mere Town Council have applied through Wiltshire Council Community Governance to consider a change to the boundary between Zeals and Mere. A Community Governance Review (CGR) is a process to provide opportunity to review and make changes to governance arrangements to town and parish councils. A website has been setup, which sets out the process and the timescales. It can be found at: www.wiltshire.gov.uk/council-democracy-cgr.
Mere Town Council have put forward a proposal to move the boundary to include the triangular field area which sits within the B3092 and A303 slip road, which is currently in the Parish of Zeals, so that it becomes part of Mere. The site currently contains an area of land which has planning permission for business use. It also contains two houses and the Visit Hillbrush production facility and visitor centre.
We need your support to ensure that the boundary is not altered for the following reasons:
- If there is residential development on the land in future, the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) which is money and investment back into the community will be payable to Mere Town Council, instead of Zeals Parish Council. This money is much needed to provide benefit and improvement to the Zeals community.
- The piece of land falls within the historic parish boundary, with Zeals Knoll to the North and Lower Zeals to the South, both of which include “Zeals” within the title and are clear in their identity of the totality of our parish.
- Any changes or future development on the land will impact the residents of Lower Zeals first and foremost due to location proximity.
- The shape of the Parishes would be an odd dog-leg shape if the land was moved into the Mere Town boundary – cutting through Zeals House parkland, Norwood and Zeals Knoll.
- Any changes or future developments on the land may result in a marked impact on the traffic within the Zeals Parish as the A303 junctions are located within Zeals.
We need the support from you, our Zeals residents, to maintain the current boundary. If you stand with Zeals Parish Council and support our reasons above, please visit: https://tinyurl.com/2p8ee65y to submit your support via the Community Governance Review Information Gathering Survey, and use the above reasons in doing so, along with any other reasons you might have.
The survey is open to receive comments until 26 November 2023, so please act fast!
Thank you in advance for your support!
Zeals Parish Council
Proposed change to the boundary map marked in blue:
Scan the QR code with your smartphone here to complete the survey:
