Over the last few months, Midsomer Norton Town Council has been working with Bristol Avon Rivers Trust (BART) to launch a local initiative at the Wellow Brook Walk site to create a community conservation space. To bring this together, the Town Council and BART have agreed to hold an evening forum in the Town Hall on Thursday, 30th March at 7 p.m. at which refreshments will be provided.

BART is a community-led organisation which aims to deliver education, land and river management advice and practical river restoration work in the Bristol Avon catchment. Through promoting an ecosystem-based approach, they aim to re-connect communities to their rivers and help river users and lovers better appreciate and improve their local rivers and streams.

The joint work has identified a number of possibilities for the site, including the construction of flow-deflecting structures throughout the site to improve flow conditions for fish, including brown trout, planting areas of wildflowers, running river dipping and water quality sessions with local schools and possibly a hibernaculum building session using the leftover wood and some pallets.

This would all contribute to the work that the Town Council has in hand to improve the footpaths, reduce the scrub, which has encroached across a considerable area, and rid the land of invasive and unwelcome species of plants.

Everyone in and around the town is invited to come along to the meeting on the 30th to discuss the project, river wildlife in general, and express their views on the Wellow Brook Walk as a whole. The Council and BART want to hear about any ideas for improvements that people would like to see and anything else that they may wish to discuss. BART and the Town Council would like to create a ‘Friends of the Wellow Brook’ group and this forum is an important first step to achieve that.