Wiltshire's flagship campus plan 'too ambitious'

The campus at Corsham is due to be completed later this month but most of it has opened

Wiltshire Council has been accused of "ambition over reality" over a major project to overhaul how public services are delivered locally.

The council has earmarked £66m to create seven campuses to house a range of services created from a "wish list" drawn up by local people.

Four of seven campuses due to open by 2016 face delays or being scaled back.

Deputy leader John Thomson blamed the financial climate but said it was not "wrong" to have big ambitions.

The council hoped to develop 18 community campuses housing services from youth clubs and police to health and libraries.

The programme was intended as part of efforts to give local people a more direct say in how public services are run - as well as reducing running costs. But the board of volunteers tasked with putting together plans were never given a budget to work with.

'Brave thing'

Of seven due to be completed by 2016, Corsham's new campus is due to be completed later this month but is already open and Salisbury and Tisbury are due to open by 2016.

But BBC Wiltshire's politics reporter Dan O'Brien said there were question marks over what would be delivered in other centres like Cricklade, Calne and Melksham.

Meanwhile, the proposals for Trowbridge and Chippenham are unlikely to happen without significant private investment.

John Hubbard, Lib Dem leader on Wiltshire Council, said: "The Conservative administration at County Hall significantly over-promised what they were ever going to be able to deliver. We have got a case of ambition over reality here."

Mr Thomson said some of the communities' ambitions had been "larger than the funding that was available" and it would have been helpful for local groups to "know what the budget was".

"It was a brave thing to say: 'Here's a blank bit of paper, what are the facilities that you need?' I think we probably should have put some criteria to that."

But he said that had given "free range" to ideas rather than the council imposing services.