Just received an email from a very helpful person at Salisbury College regarding travel habits of students.  Excerpts below:

"I would love to support anybody who is aiming to improve public transport in Wiltshire! However, we have never conducted a travel survey and it would not be easy to find out how many of our students travel from Melksham or Chippenham. A search of the database could be made using post codes ,if you supplied them, but I don't know how big an area these cover."

[Please can someone give me the relevant postcodes to forward on?]

"I am responsible for administering the travel fund which helps students aged 16-18 who live too far away for WCC to support them. Although many come from as far as Gillingham and Shaftesbury, none come from Chippenham or Melksham, which suggests that they are more likely to choose the branches of Wiltshire College in their home town. I cannot speak for the older students.

The merger with Wiltshire College is unlikely to change the transport scenario as we have been assured that there will be no question of students or staff being expected to shuttle between the different sites. This would not be desirable or practical.
[My emphasis]

If you find out any useful information yourself regarding student travel we would of course be interested to know about it. I could if you wish send this on to the management team but, with an OFSTED inspection due, followed by the merger, you might not receive a swift and detailed response. Let me know if you'd like me to try."

So, sadly no more figures as yet.  However I wonder whether the lack of desire to have flexible attendance or use of different campuses (e.g. to use different libraries) is because travel is so damn difficult across Wiltshire?

Does anyone have any comments?