A Hindu community leader in Swindon has expressed his sadness and shock after Swindon Borough Council ended the lease for their temple with immediate effect.

The council said it was forced to shut the building due to safety issues following a fifth break-in at the temple on Darby Close.

Chairman Pradeep Bhardwaj said trustees received the notice at around 10pm out of the blue last Thursday.

In its letter the council said that due to the level of damage, it was not able to reinstate the building, leaving it unfit for occupation.

“As you know the council has had an ongoing concern about the level of malicious damage caused to the building as a result of the theft of cabling and the SSE substation,” it said.

“The council has no alternative other than to recognise the advice of Hartnell Taylor Cook that the premises are unfit for occupation.

“The council is unable to repair the building at this time as such works are dependent on SSE completing works to its substation and no timeframe has been provided for carrying these out.”

Pradeep said the news came as a huge shock, just weeks before Diwali, set to take place on November 4.

“I think the biggest disappointment is that this is a festival period and we have Diwali, the Festival of Lights, which is one of our biggest festivals, if not the biggest festival.”

In a Facebook post titled “Worst possible news for all Hindus in Swindon & UK” and shared on the Swindon Hindu Temple group, trustees said: “The council has taken this unilateral step without consulting us and has not shared the report, which they have used as the material basis in their letter to terminate the lease on the pretext that the premises are unfit for occupation.

“Some of the SBC’s own inspections have not even been completed and also no attempts have been made to try address/mitigate any concerns/risks identified but still the council has chosen to go ahead and terminate the lease.”

Coun Keith Williams said an independent survey highlighted a number of issues with the building from a health and safety perspective.

He said: “The building got broken into, cabling was damaged, the electricity substation for the building was damaged. As a result, there were concerns over the earthing of the electrics. That was one of the factors.

“The generator that we put in, that has been connected through to the earth was only intended to be run for short periods.

“So, what legal basis advice was that actually we can’t allow people, we do need to act today.

“The front part of the building is being used for some temple purposes. It obviously generates fumes because it’s a generator. They thought for short periods of time the fume levels wouldn’t build up, but they had a concern that long periods of running, that would be a problem.”

Coun Williams added there was no ability to provide hot running water on site.

He said the council tried to meet with the trustees on the day they were served the notice.

“We tried to arrange a meeting on the Thursday to make the temple trust aware of this, but unfortunately none of them were available,” he said. “What happened was around just before 10pm we served the notice because we couldn’t meet on that day.”

He added: “There was a meeting already planned for 10am on Friday. Later on, on the Friday we supplied the report which detailed the concerns that have been raised.”

Coun Williams said the council was working closely with trustees to find a solution, adding that they visited two council properties that were becoming available.