EARLIER this week I was asked to put together my ideal postcard to illustrate Swindon, which was an enjoyable challenge. You will have seen the sort of card I mean – it usually has four photographs of places of interest, sometimes with a fifth picture or image in the centre.

I chose Stanton Park, the UTC, Wichelstowe and Regent Circus. It wasn’t easy as there are so many choices. Stanton Park is there because it shows the vast amount of green open space we have that we can use for recreation, exercise, and leisure.

A healthy, prosperous town is more than just factories, offices, and houses. All the great towns and cities use their cultural assets to underpin their economic success; Stanton stands for Lydiard House, STEAM and our Museum and Art Gallery, too.

I included the new University Technical College because it shows how we have used our railway heritage to provide the basis for the Borough’s future as a site to educate young people with the engineering and other vocational skills employers will need.

Wichelstowe demonstrates how we want to build quality homes, using our role as a planning authority to work with developers to create attractive and sustainable neighbourhoods where people genuinely want to live.

We need a thriving local economy to pay for all this, which is why I have chosen the Regent Circus development.

Not only has this allowed the demolition of an ugly and obsolete 1960s concrete building, but it has provided jobs and variety to the town centre through the cinema, shops and new places to eat.

The development represents an investment of about £30m by the private sector, and it is testament to investors’ confidence that the completed site was later sold for over £40m.

In the centre of the card I would use the Borough’s formal coat of arms and legend: salubritas et industria. We are already using the arms as part of the new welcome signs on various roads into the Borough and it incorporates two themes that dominate our work here at the council.

Industria relates to being creative and productive, and I am pleased that we have so many thriving small and medium enterprises along with our established national and international firms, and salubritas means healthy, wholesome, or decent. This fits well with the Council’s role in promoting public health, our duties along with partners as part of the Health and Wellbeing Board and our responsibilities to care for the vulnerable of all ages.

What would be on your card, I wonder?