MELKSHAM Town and Melksham Without will stay as two separate entities, it was decided as Wiltshire Council’s community governance review came to a close this week.

The controversial plan is now not recommended to go ahead, after it faced much opposition from residents in villages around the town.

Cabinet member for governance, Cllr Stuart Wheeler, told council on Tuesday: “The proposal is that Melksham and Melksham Without be replaced by a single parish.

"Main argument in favour of this is that this would create a stronger, more resilient parish, which would be better able to provide services to residents now and in future.

"A larger parish would be able to take on additional responsibilities for the benefit of the local community.

"The counter-argument, put forward by Melksham Without Parish Council, is that the two parishes have separate identities which would be lost in a merger and that the interests of the residents of Melksham Without do not always coincide with those of Melksham.

“After a long debate the panel have decided to recommend that there be no change and they should remain as separate beings.

"The panel decided the existing structure gave effective government.”

Three public meetings were held in Melksham discussing the proposals in the area and hundreds of people turned out in force to voice their concerns.

Counter arguments were put forward by representatives from both councils including Jon Hubbard who believed the merger would benefit the entire town. He said: “It comes as no surprise that I quite like doughnuts and I quite like the bit in the middle of a doughnut which is the jam and of course Melksham Without has been described as a doughnut parish surrounding the town of Melksham. No doughnut works unless it has all the ingredients in it. Jam is all well and good on its own but you can’t make the most of it unless it has the bit of dough around the outside which is why I am fully supportive of the merger of two parishes. I think it is really important to stress that we are not talking a takeover of one parish onto another but we are talking about creating a brand new authority.”

However chairman of Melksham Without parish council, Richard Wood, said as the area is the largest non-urban parish in the county, he believed that should be taken into consideration.

He added: “Melksham Without is not a tiny village, it is five villages and what was considered today was governance.

“Good governance should reflect the identities and interests of the communities and we have a town which is surrounded by five villages.

“It is clear to me that this the major proposal of all the ones we are hearing as it subsumes villages in non-urban parish with the town council to form a very large council and we don’t buy all this business about services. We run our own services, our own playgrounds and we precept for those and we run them at a high level.

“We are a flourishing parish and we don’t want to be subsumed into a town-centric set up.”

Also discussed at the meeting was the transfer of the Snarlton Lane 733-home scheme to Melksham Town, which is set to add £40,000 to town council income.

Councillors also decided to transfer land near Dunch Lane on the A365 to Melksham Town. They refused to transfer land at Locking Close from Seend Parish to Melksham Without.