Block Management in Mere
Block, estate and leasehold management for Mere. Compliance is tracked against Wiltshire Council.
Managing a Block in Mere at a Glance
- Local authority
- Wiltshire Council
- Authority type
- Unitary
- Building control
- Wiltshire Council Building Control
- County
- Wiltshire
- Fire and rescue service
- Dorset and Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service
- Water and sewerage
- Wessex Water
- Setting
- Inland
Who You Deal with in Mere
A block in Mere deals with Wiltshire Council, a unitary authority, so building control, planning and housing enforcement sit with one body. Fire safety in the common parts is enforced by Dorset and Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service. Communal water and sewerage is Wessex Water.
The Residential Stock in Mere
The published Mere ward figure is 169 flats among 2,045 households, 8.3 per cent, but only nine of the ward's fifteen census output areas fall inside the town, so about two fifths of it is rural parish. Narrowing to the town gives 1,337 households and 138 flats, 10.3 per cent, made up of 92 in purpose-built blocks, 6 in a converted or shared house, 28 in another converted building and 12 over commercial premises. The correction runs in the direction people rarely expect: clipping to the town raises the flat share rather than lowering it, because the rural remainder is almost entirely detached houses.
Flood Risk in Mere
Groundwater is the dominant mechanism at Mere and it covers almost the whole town: the Salisbury Plain groundwater alert contains 87.20 per cent of the built-up area. The Upper Stour tributaries alert, which lists the Shreen among its watercourses, covers a further 5.60 per cent. No flood warning area covers any part of the town. Two watercourses run through it and they have different legal statuses, which matters for who is responsible: the Shreen Water is designated main river, while the Ashfield Water is an ordinary watercourse. Only the Shreen runs through the conservation area. A caution for anyone checking this themselves: the Cranborne Chase groundwater alert names Mere in its published description but its polygon is nearly twelve kilometres away and does not touch the town, while the Salisbury Plain alert does not name Mere at all yet contains almost all of it. The containment test and the description give opposite answers, and the containment test is the right one. There is no flood scheme here and the negative is unusually well established: no statutory flood investigation has been carried out at Mere, the town does not appear among the council's operational flood working groups, and although the Environment Agency's asset data records 98 features in the parish every single one is natural high ground in private ownership rather than an engineered defence.
The cost lands on the insurance schedule and on the reserve fund long before any water does.
Conservation Areas and Listed Buildings in Mere
One conservation area, designated in 1973. The two date fields the council publishes disagree in form and no page corroborates an exact day, so the year is as far as the evidence goes. It is proportionally one of the largest designations of any town covered here: 34.2 hectares, of which about 71 per cent lies inside the built-up area, covering 21.1 per cent of the town. There is no appraisal, and this is a positive absence rather than a research gap. The document the council attaches to the designation is a single page whose entire body states that documentation for this conservation area statement cannot be referenced at this time. So for a fifth of Mere there is a designation and no character assessment at all to argue a scheme against.
91 entries on the National Heritage List fall inside the parish, two Grade I and three Grade II*, of which 68 sit inside the conservation area and 71 inside the built-up area. The two Grade I buildings are the Church of St Michael the Archangel on Church Street, first listed on 6 January 1966, and Woodlands Manor. The Grade II* entries are The Chantry, the Old Ship Hotel and Dewes House, all listed the same day and amended in July 1989. The parish also holds seventeen scheduled monuments, two of which reach the built-up area, Mere Castle and the barrows on Long Hill. There is no registered park or garden in the parish: Stourhead is in Stourton, not Mere.
The sequencing is what catches boards out: consent first, then the Section 20 specification. Specify and consult before consent is in hand and the consultation has to be run again.
Radon in Mere
Mere is the outlier among the Wiltshire towns covered here. Four of them top out at class 2, at 1 to 3 per cent of homes at or above the action level. Mere has a class 5 square, at 10 to 30 per cent, and it covers 20.2 per cent of the built-up area, while the remaining four fifths of the town sits in the lowest band where the published advice is that measurement is not advised. So a fifth of built Mere is in a band nowhere else in these towns reaches, directly alongside ground where the national advice is to do nothing. This is the one place covered in this part of Wiltshire where checking the individual address genuinely changes the answer.
That is national advice about the ground, not about the building. The same map excludes basements, cellars and underground spaces at every band, so an enclosed plant room, undercroft or lower-ground flat is still worth a look even here, and whatever is found belongs with the compliance record.
Licensing and Permitted Development in Mere
One Article 4 direction applies, and it is narrow, recent and nothing to do with the historic town. It covers a single parcel of land at the Old Nurseries adjoining Burton Field, made with immediate effect on 7 September 2020 and confirmed that November, and it removes permitted development rights for the erection, construction, maintenance, improvement or alteration of a gate, fence, wall or other means of enclosure. The site is about a kilometre east-north-east of the conservation area and covers under half a per cent of the town. Two things follow. There is no Article 4 direction over Mere's conservation area, so permitted development there is restricted only by the conservation area regime itself. And the direction's reference number begins with the digits 93, which is not a date: the direction is from 2020.
Two permissions get confused here. The council's requirements are public law and apply whatever the lease says; consent under the lease is private law and applies whatever the council says. A leaseholder letting a flat usually needs both.
Planning Policy That Affects Flats in Mere
Decided under the Wiltshire Core Strategy, adopted 20 January 2015, whose Core Policy 17 makes Mere a local service centre and provides for approximately 285 new homes across the community area to 2026, about 235 of them at Mere, together with three hectares of employment land carried forward as a saved allocation. The strategy notes that settlements across the border in Dorset and Somerset, particularly Gillingham, also provide employment, education, retail and leisure, and that the nearest railway station is at Gillingham. Saved policies from the Salisbury District Local Plan of 2003 continue to apply. The emerging Wiltshire Local Plan reached examination in November 2024 but was withdrawn on 22 May 2026 under section 22 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, with its replacement not expected before 30 April 2029, and the council states that the 2015 Core Strategy's policies are not automatically out of date and will continue to guide development. There is no made neighbourhood plan and no referendum has been held: a neighbourhood area was designated on 14 December 2018 covering the whole town council area and nothing has been published since. On the National Landscape the distinction between the town and the wider area matters a great deal. About 47.8 per cent of Mere parish lies inside the Cranborne Chase designation, but only 1.64 per cent of the built-up area does, in a fringe at the north-east corner, and none of the conservation area at all. The adopted strategy's statement that a large part of the area is included within the designation refers to the Mere Community Area, a much larger unit than the town, and the two should not be allowed to collapse into a claim that Mere is in the AONB. That said, the nearest point of the conservation area to the boundary is only about 40 metres, so the setting of the designation is a live consideration on the town's northern edge.
This is development plan policy, so it binds the council when it decides an application and it binds a leaseholder's alteration just as it binds a developer's scheme. It sits alongside, not instead of, the consent the lease requires.
Changing Managing Agent in Mere
A board does not need a reason to change agent and does not need the outgoing agent's agreement. It needs to follow its own articles and serve whatever notice the management agreement requires. On Mere heritage stock the consents history is what most often turns out to be incomplete, and its absence resurfaces later as a planning problem.
See the handover sequence in full, and our fees, which are a fixed annual amount with no commission on contractor work.
Service charge or accounts query? Email accounts@plymouthblockmanagement.com and quote your development and flat number, or .
Mere Questions
Which Council Does a Block in Mere Deal With?
Wiltshire Council Building Control. One body, so building control, planning and licensing sit together.
Who Enforces Fire Safety in the Common Parts in Mere?
Dorset and Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service, as the enforcing authority for the Fire Safety Order.
Who Supplies Water to a Development in Mere?
Wessex Water. A communal supply is the building's contract, not a leaseholder's, so report a loss to common parts through us.
Do We Need Consent for External Works in Mere?
On a listed building or in a conservation area, yes, for much that would be permitted elsewhere. Get it before the Section 20 specification, not after.
Nearby Areas
Talk to Us About Your Building in Mere.
A free, no-obligation proposal, written so it can be circulated to a board.