WILL work ever start on Corsham’s Mansion House or will this fine Georgian building just fall into terminal decay like the Assize Courts in Devizes?
It is now two and a half years since Wiltshire Council was offered a substantial £2.5m restoration grant and revoked the decision in August 2014 to sell the property to Martingate Centre Ltd – a family company and major stakeholders in the town owning and managing the shopping centre. 
Incredibly, planning has yet to be granted, let alone a building contract agreed. A start date is not remotely in sight. This is truly a disgrace and Corsham and our community is the sufferer.
Although a disappointment at the time when the council decided to take back control, especially as we had our plans well advanced and would certainly have had the building completed and occupied by now, it is perhaps a relief we are no longer involved in a development. It  carries significant risk, practically, politically, and financially, and with the costs surely escalating due to further deterioration and recurrent vandalism. 
Nevertheless, this is a fine 
historic building in a prominent position and bringing it back into productive use is hugely important to the town.
Having decided they are best able to deliver economic development and with the substantial public grant, the council now has a responsibility to deliver. It faces two material issues beyond responsibility for the delays already incurred. 
Firstly, there is a real risk the LEP grant will be withdrawn (there is a time limit) and secondly that the grant will not be enough to complete the current plan, which includes an adjacent new-build teaching block for Digital Corsham. 
As the Corsham Institute has now made clear, the building does not meet its requirements (and Bath Spa University is not able to commit) so there is no longer a clear end user and established need. 
It would surely be sensible to prioritise the spend on the listed building and defer at least for now the new-build annexe. 
The modern design next to the Georgian building is anyway proving controversial and holding up the planning process.
Please Wiltshire Council, just get on with it.
BILL HALL
Director 
Martingate Centre Ltd
Market Lavington