A MAJOR effort to give local government a stronger and more united voice is to get under way in Tidworth on Monday when the new community area forum holds it first meeting.

Members of t he forum will include all the county and district councillors from the area surrounding Tidworth and parish council chairmen.

The meeting, which starts in the Tidworth Community Centre at 7pm, will be open to the public and can discuss all areas of interest to people in Tidworth, Ludgershall, Chutes, Everleigh and the Collingbournes as well as a few villages to the north.

Kennet District Council chief executive, Mark Boden, who outlined the proposals in Tidworth said the idea had been trialled successfully in the Devizes area and had already been operating in one form in the Tidworth area as councillors from the three tiers of local government had been getting together to meet the police on a regular basis for years.

"In some ways we are stealing Sgt Oatway's ideas," said Mr Boden.

"The meeting with police gives the members a chance to speak to some high-priced and high-powered police officers. "In the same way you will now be able to reach highways officers, the health authority or education officers.

"You will be able to express your views to anybody you feel you have the cheek enough to tell."

The community meeting will first have to decide what to call itself as some parish chairmen expressed the view that it should be referred to as the south east Kennet community area rather than Tidworth.

Mr Boden said this community area was one of 19 identified by the county council across Wiltshire and they broadly reflected the boundaries of the former councils which existed before the 1974 reorganisation.

He added that the Tidworth area, however, is the only one in which the largest community, Tidworth, has another significantly sized community very close by.