THE team responsible for shaping the future of Swindon town centre have been urged to be bold in their plans.

The chief of The New Swindon Company, Peter Andrews, has just been appointed to look at all the possible options for redeveloping the town centre, and come up with a plan by June.

But North Swindon MP Michael Wills says the company must not be too timid in their plans for the centre.

He said: "In the past Swindon has often been quite timid when it comes to making sweeping changes, but now is the time to be brave and make far reaching decisions to give the town the centre it really deserves."

Although Mr Andrews has only been in the post eight days, he has already put together a consultancy strategy that includes hearing representations from the council, traders' groups, residents, the chamber of commerce and MPs.

He said: "Obviously we will have to take into account the existing traders and current ownership and leases of land and make changes to the town centre around it. We are not planning to bulldoze the whole area.

"At the moment we are putting together all the information we currently have. There will be a public consultation between now and April, when we will listen to all the various groups and their particular needs and plans.

"From all those different views we can then start to put together a framework, in the same way you put together a jigsaw puzzle of what the new town centre should look like.

"Redevelopment has a lot of different meanings to different people, so we will be looking to get everyone involved and contributing their ideas of what it means to redevelop a town centre.

"The plans for the University of Bath in Swindon and the expansion of Swindon College are obviously very exciting to the town.

"We will be making sure their needs and the needs of their students will be included.

"We will also be looking closely at the level of housing needed in that area, the environment, what the traders think, and the views of the wider public, as well as making sure it fits in with the council's local development plan."

Mr Wills said: "We have a golden opportunity here to really make the town centre special. We will soon have an influx of students coming to the town, and we need to make sure that there are plenty of places for them to go.

"The new university will be our chance to create a town with a really cool and varied night life, which we need to make solid plans for.

"Once the university goes ahead we will have 4,000 students in town, and we need to ask whether they would prefer to be stuck in a greenfield at Commonhead, or be part of a vibrant and exciting town centre.

"We need bars, live music facilities, clubs and we need to attract top DJs and all the things that students want which will also be attractive to the young professionals in the town.

"If we have ambition enough we can really get it right here."

Preliminary plans will be available to the public for comment from May onwards.