THE SHAPE OF SWINDON: PROGRESS is being made at the new headquarters for Swindon police.

The £25m building is being constructed on a site opposite Sains-bury's supermarket off the A420 Oxford Road. The headquarters are scheduled to be finished in the next 12 months.

The Wiltshire Police Authority is funding the new building through a Private Finance Initiative.

The deal means that Vinci Invest-ments will pay for the building and the police will pay back the money during the course of a long-term lease.

The police authority will pay £255,000 a year over 30 years.

The new base will replace the 1960s Fleming Way headquarters.

The main advantage of the new station will be ease of access for the force as it is responsible for policing large stretches of the A420, A419 and a 37-mile run of the M4 motorway.

And it fits in with a rethink of the way Swindon is policed.

The new headquarters will be complemented by a series of smaller satellite stations at four points around the town, which will act as drop-in centres for members of the public.

Two of the smaller stations are already operational at the Orbital Retail Park in North Swindon and the West Swindon Centre.

A new station is planned for South Swindon, probably as part of the Front Garden development.

The Wiltshire Ambulance Trust had also planned to share the building with the police in a move away from the Queens Drive headquarters, but pulled out of the project on cost grounds.