A £370,000 project to transform the Market Place in Westbury has been praised by businesses and civic leaders after being unveiled on Friday.

Town mayor Mike Hawkins was joined by town crier Sean Price and representatives from the county and district councils and chamber of commerce at the official reopening of the Market Place.

Gloria Los, bar manager at The White Lion pub in Market Place, said she’d heard only positive things about the new-look square, which no longer has parking spaces clumped in the middle and is more pedestrian friendly.

She said: “It is a great improvement and it looks fantastic. It was a bit of an inconvenience for people in the area when the work was going on but it looks much better and people have been saying so.”

Funding for the work came from Wiltshire County Council, West Wiltshire District Council and Westbury Town Council, through the five towns initiative.

The improvements were prompted by the Vision for Westbury exercise in 2004, which flagged up that Market Place was not being used to its full potential and needed to have better links with the rest of the town centre.

The project involved moving the car parking spaces away from the centre to the edges, planting of more trees, installing new street furniture, including benches, and creating space for a civic monument.

Cllr Hawkins said: “It is all looking very very nice down there and it all went very well on Friday.

“I am glad a number of the businesses in the square smartened up their own premises too because obviously they will attract or detract from the area.”

Cllr Hawkins said there was a plinth set aside for a civic monument, if the residents of Westbury decided they want one.