Progress but still looking for more funding ......

The Studley Grange project is still top of the list in keeping us on our toes! The final permissions are taking shape and subject to one more this week, the machines will be on site next Monday.

I hope you will be able to help with another vote. There is currently an opportunity to secure £25k for the Peterborough Arms project. All you need to do is register and vote at https://foundation.onefamily.com/projects/peterborough-arms/ . Please ask your colleagues and friends to support this if they can.

The week ahead focuses on the Pewsham Locks project from two different perspectives.

A small team from the Heritage Lottery Fund will be visiting to further assess the suitability of the restoration proposals for a grant application.
Another visit the following day will be from the assessors in the Canal and River Trust Living Waterways Award scheme. There is no monetary aspect to the award but it would be a great achievement for the hard working team who made last year’s open days such a success and who continue to work with local community groups.
 

If you have visited the Swindon Wichelstowe Waitrose in the last week you will have seen (or at least seen from afar!) the excellent work that has been carried out by the WBCT volunteers in installing the piling for the new landing stage - it’s now over to the contractor to surface the landing stage and construct the path to the car park.

 

The business of WBCT continues with the monthly meeting of the Finance and Administration Committee (Fincom) on Wednesday. All Trust meetings are now held in the currently rather frugal setting of the community space at the Peterborough Arms where we are surrounded with the evidence of more hard work on the building refurbishment. Work is in hand to set up the engineering office for the Trust so all the project documentation can be held in a relatively central location.

 
On Thursday the members of the Wiltshire Swindon & Oxfordshire Canal Partnership will meet for their regular quarterly update and discussions. Less building work will be in evidence in the venue at Wiltshire Council Offices in Chippenham!  I am sure those attending will be congratulating, as I do, the Swindon Borough Council representative and WSO Partnership deputy chairman Cllr Andrew Bennett, on taking up his duties as Mayor of Swindon.

 

Ken Oliver