Lobby is blamed for loss of £5m grant (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Lobby is blamed for loss of £5m grant

WILTSHIRE county councillors have heaped blame on the Trowbridge lobby for the loss of £5 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund for a new Wiltshire and Swindon Record Office.

At a council meeting on Tuesday, Coun Judy Seager slated the protesters who lobbied the fund to halt the building of the record office in Chippenham.

"The protesters have deprived the whole county of £5 million we might have got from the Heritage Lottery Fund," she said.

"The Trowbridge lobby made sure the funding application was turned down. People out there are very sorry this money was lost through that sort of unnecessary protest. The decision was democratically made and scrutinised. We compromised on the Chippenham location."

Liberal Democrat leader Coun Trevor Carbin said he wanted further negotiations with Swindon and preferred the Trowbridge option.

He said: "The fact is this whole sorry saga has been a long catalogue of blundering. What should have been a simple job restoring or re-building a clapped out record office has turned into Wiltshire's version of the Millennium Dome. We have failed to negotiate effectively with Swindon and attempts to blame the Heritage Lottery Fund are unconvincing."

Coun Peter Chalke, former leader and champion of the new record office, blamed falling lottery revenue for the loss of the bid but also attributed blame to the Trowbridge lobby. "People were kicking against a democratically made decision and it was one of the nails in the coffin for the bid," he said.

Despite renewed protests from the Keep the Record Office in Trowbridge campaigners at the meeting, the county council decided to back a plan to build a redesigned facility in Chippenham.

The Heritage Lottery Fund refused the grant, expressing concerns about the high cost of the project.

"While we recognised the aspiration to provide a signature building, we felt that the proposed high specification of building was not entirely appropriate for the archive or the site," said senior grants officer Amanda Miller.

Since the refusal, the county council and Swindon Borough Council have been looking at alternative plans.

A scaled down design will hold the Wiltshire and Swindon records but other services planned for the original record office, including a local studies library, the archaeology service, the museums and conservation services and the Wiltshire Buildings Record, may be included in the new design or may have to be provided elsewhere.

Coun Scott said: "We have made our decision to build in Chippenham and providing Swindon Borough Council comes to the same decision we hope to get moving on this project. If we delay, costs will increase."

Without the lottery grant, a downscaled records building without the other services would cost the county an estimated £920,000 over and above the £5.66 million already committed to the project. The extra funding would come out of capital programmes.