Of £20m granted to Swindon Borough Council for seven regeneration projects for the town centre, the largest amount – £6m – will be spent on enabling the Kimmerfields development.

The work on the site – which will have a new headquarters tower for finance company Zurich – is the most expensive of all the schemes put forward by the council and its Towns Fund Board, a report reveals.

The cheapest is the plan to create a new marketplace in the town centre – although that still needs to have a site identified.

The Kimmerfields plan will also need £10.5m of the council’s own money to be brought to completion – the report says the project will create 100,000 sq ft of office space, 250 flats and will include a new access off Corporation Street and will see public areas revamped and made into green space.

The historic Railway Village area and GWR works will also see a lot of money spent – added together the five schemes there will take £13.4m of the £20m grant, with another £1.5m from the council and smaller amounts from Historic England, Arts Council England and other government handouts.

Revamping the Carriage Works to create more business and teaching spaces will take £5m of the fund. One of the units to be internally remodelled is earmarked for the Innovation Room of the Centre for Sustainable and Circular Technologies – a collaboration between the Universities of Bath and Oxford.

Nearly half a million pounds of the grant will be used to build a new home for Create Studios, a charity which provides young people with digital media skills and experience at the GWR buildings.

The Health Hydro in Milton Road will also get a large chunk of the grant money – £5m, with £1.5m of the council’s cash as well.

The report says: “Refurbishment will enable this building to play a much higher profile role in the civic life of Swindon as it did 100 years ago and, will play a key role in showcasing Swindon’s unusual but relatively unknown and under-appreciated heritage.

"A revitalised building and facilities will be used to support the health and wellbeing of the town. Its town centre location supported by improved pedestrian links will encourage active travel from other parts of the town centre and it will enable targeted work to improve the health of residents in the surrounding area who are within the bottom 20 per cent for national indices of deprivation.”

A sum of £3m each will be spent on improving Station Road and Bristol Street, particularly fixing the Sheppard Street underpass and the Bristol Road tunnel – with the aim of making getting around the town centre on foot and by bike much easier.

The last project is to create a new market in the town centre.

That was going to be on land owned by the Brunel Centre landlords FI Real Estate Management – but the company withdrew its offer saying it needed to concentrate on recovery from the pandemic.

The board is still working on finding a new site for the scheme.

Council cabinet member for the town centre Dale Heenan said: “This area of the town centre is visibly changing.

"Historic England and the council have an ambitious five-year plan for Swindon’s heritage which will see the Health Hydro restored to its full glory and see progress on the derelict Mechanics' Institute to unlock the potential between the Designer Outlet and the town centre.

“The Carriage Works is a central part of the jigsaw that shows our long-term plan for regenerating our town is working."