PROPOSALS by Monmouthshire County Council (MCC) to change the electoral arrangements for several villages in the Wye Valley have come under fire – amid claims that it will 'wrongly displace' many of them.

As the deadline of February 28 for the ending of public consultation on the plans approaches, the furore centres on the county council decision, taken late last year, to 'balance' the different community councils in the county, to make them more equal in terms of head of population.

Villagers in Trellech have mounted a vociferous campaign against their changes, which would see them 'lose' Llandogo, which would then merge with Tintern.

Two community councillors, Ashley Thomas and Bob Dagger, have issued a statement condemning the proposals. They wrote: "Our local council, Trellech United Community Council (TUCC), comprises seven villages (Trellech, Penallt, Llandogo, Whitebrook, The Narth, Catbrook and Llanishen) with a population that is higher than the average community council. MCC finds this 'anomaly' unacceptable and propose to reduce the size of TUCC by cutting out Llandogo and pasting it with Tintern to form a new combined community council."

This, they argue, would break many traditional links that Llanogo has with Monmouth, pointing out that the road transport links, proximity and school and work catchment areas, point strongly to a Monmouth connection rather than Chepstow.

In addition, they posed several querstions: "Does MCC intend to transfer Llandogo to the Chepstow School catchment area? Does this mean that Llandogo will no longer be in the Monmouthshire Central Area? What provision will be made regarding the inspection of planning applications and similar One Stop Shop facilities?"

In the draft proposals by MCC are also considerations to change the name of Tintern, believing that: "The name Wye Valley may be better suited to defining the area that the community covers."

But there have also been rumbles of disagreement from county and community councillors over the proposed combining of the different villages, and in the public consultation documents is a note from St Arvans County Councillor, Ann Webb, who wrote: "I, as the local member for Trellech Grange would strongly oppose this being included unto the Trellech United ward. There are historical reasons for this being within St Arvans division."

A similar view was also taken in another comment on the plans, where Clerk to Tintern Community Council, Elizabeth Greatorex-Davies, wrote: "At a recent meeting of Tintern Community Council the draft review of communities and electoral arrangements were discussed. Their response was that the present boundaries worked well and could seee no reason to change them. However, if changes were to be made, councillors wrere quite happy with the proposal that Penterry ward be transferred to St Arvans Council, and Llandogo be linked to Tintern Council."

She added: "They were, however, concerned at the proposal that Trellech Grange be linked with Trellech United Council. We feel thgat historically The Grange was always linked to Tintern Abbey and that it should continue to do so."

The full draft proposals, and maps of the changes, can be found on the Monmouthshire County Council website, or at http://mcc-communityboundaries.weebly.com/tintern.html">http://mcc-communityboundaries.weebly.com/tintern.html, (for Tintern proposals) or the same web address, ending instead with trellech-united.html (for Trellech proposals).