THE councillor charged with delivering on town centre regeneration has urged the public to believe that progress is possible.

Speaking as the council welcomed a number of town centre businesses to view their plans at the Central Library on Thursday evening, Garry Perkins said he shared the public’s frustrations but focusing on previous delays wouldn’t deliver for the future.

“It’s four years since we launched the masterplan in this exact library. People assume that nothing has happened since then, but these projects take time.

“What we’re showing here is that we haven’t sat around doing nothing, we’ve got the projects going forward.

“Some are already being delivered, some are close to being delivered and some will take a little longer - but they’re all still here as people asked for.

“We were remiss not to do these events more often so people could see the progress. I’m very positive about the future, some projects will have problems of course, but they are good projects and we know by talking to the market that they are feasible and viable.”

The council hopes that by putting their plans on show and asking for public feedback, they can reassure the not insignificant number of residents who have doubts and feel like they’ve heard it all before.

But Coun Perkins said it was frustrating that many of those people wouldn’t turn up to hear the council’s case.

“Most of the naysayers won’t bother to come,” he said. “Maybe they want to remain naysayers and don’t want to be informed.

“All of the people that I’ve spoken to want to engage, they want to be part of what is happening moving forward.

“We’re here until Sunday, everybody has a view, please come down and have your say.”

The four day public viewing event comes in the same week that Labour renewed their calls for Forward Swindon - the council’s development arm - to be brought back under council control.

Run as an arm’s length external company, Forward Swindon has recently seen its remit narrowed to focus just on the town centre.

The Conservative administration rejected Labour’s calls to reform the arrangements immediately but stopped short of guaranteeing the company’s future beyond the start of next year. A final decision will be made in October.

Labour leader Jim Grant said: “We have had a long-held position to bring the Forward Swindon company back within the council.

“One reason we’ve held this position is because there is a great deal of duplication between what projects Forward Swindon are working on and what projects the council are working on. And that has come at a greater cost to the taxpayer than should have otherwise been.

“Another reason why Forward Swindon should be brought back in-house is that it failed to get the investment from the private sector that the Conservative group said they would get when they set up the company.

“With the Council’s Director for Economic Development leaving Swindon, we thought this would be an opportune time to review the future of Forward Swindon and its separate relationship from the council.

“The Conservative group weren’t willing to accept that argument at this time because it came from the Labour group, but we hope they will reconsider in the coming months.”