A £4MILLION development with a care home, shops, children's day nursery and offices is being proposed on greenfield land off Nursteed Road, Devizes.

The four-acre site is to the south of land occupied by T.H. White and close to the new link road and roundabout serving the new Nursteed Meadows housing estate off Brickley Lane.

The site is owned by Bloor Homes and Persimmon Homes which are building houses at Nursteed Meadows. Dansecroft Commercial Developments of Mayfair, London, has submitted the scheme on their behalf to Kennet District Council.

The central building in the scheme would be a 50-bed care home for the elderly but there are also small shops and a convenience store.

Kennet's planning officers say that they would prefer to see a care home built on land allocated for residential use and do not think there is a need for the shops as there are existing shops in nearby Eastleigh Road.

But Mayor Paula Winchcombe, the chairman of DASH2, Devizes Action to Save Our Hospital, said she feared if the home was built it could scupper plans for a new hospital at Green Lane.

Kennet and North Wiltshire Primary Care Trust has made it clear that a new hospital will only have inpatient beds if a care home is built alongside it.

Danescroft spokesman Duncan Ford said Devizes could easily support two care homes, one on the Nursteed site and one as part of the hospital redevelopment, because there is a high demand for care home places."

He said that One Stop, which already had a shop in Eastleigh Road, would like to have another shop at Nursteed.

"The parade of shops in Eastleigh Road has a limited number of parking spaces and it gets extremely congested," he said.

"In my view it cannot cope with the sort of population growth that has taken place in Devizes in the last few years. I think residents would welcome a few more shops on their doorstep."

He added that the proposed development could create between 55 and 60 jobs.