THE replacement of the Whitchurch Civic Centre roof and associated items is the top preference in a Shropshire Council survey.

With much of the initial findings already out from the council, such as around 10 per cent of town’s population responded, the full report is now available for people to read.

In it, it showed that the top two options for the future of the Civic Centre among the 1,130 respondents was to either replace the roof or keep the Raac in the building and carry out internal works.

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Demolition and rebuild as in its current set out came third while the chance to demolish the Civic and rebuild from a blank canvas came only fourth.

Nearly half of those responding said that the Civic Centre is vital for the community but fewer than 10 per cent wanted it modernised or all previous facilities replaced.

In regard to facilities, 94 per cent said it has to have a library and 92 per cent said a market, while 80 per cent said it needs a space for private functions.

There was strong support for a sports hall, the town council, and ‘plays/films’.

Only 17 per cent of respondents felt there was a need for a DVLA test centre, as per plans prior to the Raac discovery, while 10 per cent wanted a larger public sector presence.

Meanwhile, the high number of respondents for the Shropshire Council’s Whitchurch Civic Centre survey is down to local activist, it said.

It said: “In total, 1,130 respondents completed the survey – 807 completed online surveys, and 323 returned paper responses.

“This number represents more than 10 per cent of the actual population of Whitchurch.

“This is unusual for Shropshire Council consultations in two ways.

“First, it is a higher percentage of a targeted population than typically responds to consultations.

“Second, this is an extremely high percentage of paper copies completed. Both phenomena are likely due to a mobilisation effort by local town councillors and officers, who made copies of the paper survey and had volunteers handing them out for residents to complete.

“Such a high response rate is notable and these methods of encouraging survey uptake should be noted for future consultations.”

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Nearly a third of the respondents said they heard of the survey through North Shropshire MP Helen Morgan while 18 per cent said the Savour Civic Centre group’s street protests.

A third of respondents said they previously the Civic for a concert, show or gig while 17 per cent said they only used it for the toilets as it is ‘the only one in Whitchurch’.

Market use was surprisingly low at nine per cent though an encouraging low two per cent said they did not use the centre at all.