THE minister for tourism and heritage has praised the transformation of the former GWR works as the town’s MPs speak out in favour of similar development elsewhere in the town.

Tracey Crouch MP visited Swindon this morning at the start of a trip across the South West to mark English tourism week.

Accompanied by the town’s two MPs, she was taken on a tour of the National Trust and English Heritage headquarters and then on to a visit to the Steam museum.

“On my short journey here the first word I said to Justin Tomlinson was wow,” said the Minister.

“This is exactly what you want to see, buildings restored and preserved for the future but reflecting the modern world that we live in.

“Quite often we have buildings that are derelict but they’re listed so people think that nothing can happen to them.

“We’re getting a lot of development around the country where you can do really sensitive work in line with the history and heritage - this is a really, really good example of it.

“I know there are other heritage buildings around Swindon that could really benefit from that sort of approach.”

But the Minister was keen to stress it was not a task that developers, or indeed local authorities, could tackle alone.

“It has to be a partnership,” she said. “Getting the community involved at the very start and explaining the sensitive development that you want to do is the key to the success of a project.”

“Here they have taken what was an area that was pretty abandoned and they’ve built this amazing environment around it.”

Both MPs welcomed the visit by the Minister and said they were pleased to be able to show her a side of Swindon that isn’t always acknowledged by those from outside the town.

Robert Buckland said: “I’m pleased that the Minister came to Swindon today, not just to emphasise the importance of heritage to our local economy and our reputation but also to understand the changing nature of the way we’re approaching heritage and leisure in Swindon.

“I was encouraged by what she said about partnership working - when you get the support of the community you avoid the sort of elephant traps that frankly have been fallen into with buildings like the Health Hydro.”

Justin Tomlinson said that just praising the success to the north of the railway line was not enough.

“One of the main reasons for this visit was to showcase the combination of Steam, high quality employers, mixed with high quality residential regeneration,” he said.

“This site is now a huge success economically for Swindon which is in stark contrast to the failure of the town centre regeneration.

“That is why I’ve been pushing for what we’ve seen here to be replicated ‘like for like’ directly on the other side of this line.

“That land should be made available for the same developers to move into - this area is lifting the whole of the town and helping to deliver the skilled jobs that our growing economy requires.”