When Under One Roof was started it was decided that it should include an area board for Avon.
It's not widely known that the county of Avon was in fact abolished in 1996 having come into existence in April 1974. Some places will have been originally in Somerset, then in Avon and now in Somerset again. The confusion is added to by some institutions which still carry the name, such as the Avon Wildlife Trust and The Avon and Somerset Constabulary. Road signs welcoming travellers to Avon can also still be found.
We decided that by having both an Avon board and a separate Somerset board we could leave it up to our members to decide in which one they lived in. At first this worked well but as UOR got busier problems began to arise, a few members were putting their advert on both boards, which gave us the problem of which one to delete.
It was when asking one member which advert to remove, that the idea of combining them into one came about.
Her argument was simple, if she posted in Avon then her advert might be missed if somebody just looked in Somerset and vice-versa. Which meant she could miss out on a possible exchange, not the idea at all! The two boards would both have to be checked by anyone wishing to move to Bath for example which just complicated matters.
We asked members what they thought about merging the Avon and Somerset boards into one. All those who replied agreed it was a good idea and so they were combined into one.
