SWINDON Council will tonight pull the plug on its commitment towards the restoration of Lydiard Park because it is too strapped for cash.

Council leader Mike Bawden (Con, Old Towns and Lawns) will tell the authority's decision-making cabinet that it can ill afford to splash out an initial £500,000 and a further £2.5m over five years and run the risk of it becoming 'another Steam'.

The withdrawal of council support will mean that the restoration project will fall for the sixth time.

The bid to restore the Georgian country house and gardens in West Swindon was started last year when Swindon-based Innogy (formerly National Power) gave £70,000 towards the £5.5m project, which would restore features such as the 18th-century vegetable garden and lake, the banks of which collapsed in 1911.

Other elements of the project include extensive landscaping of the 260-acre site to include a footpath and cycle route and the conversion of the 18th-century stable block to include a tearoom, classroom and public toilets.

The council's long-term view is to make Lydiard Park into one of the top tourist attractions in the south west.

But with £52m of outstanding repairs still waiting to be undertaken at schools across the borough and the council's education and social services departments struggling for cash, Coun Baden believes the authority's priorities lie elsewhere.

He said: "Repairing classrooms is a statutory responsibility restoring Lydiard Park to what it looked like 200-years ago is not. We're fully supportive of the restoration and if the revenue wasn't an issue it wouldn't be a problem but looking back over the past two years the council has put up council tax by 30 per cent and next year's budget is indicating a rise of 8.3 per cent.

"And what with the situation in our social services and education departments we just can't commit.

"The priority of this council is to build a new central library, but we have no idea of what the costs of that will be and we don't have an unlimited amount of money to develop a museum and art gallery.

"This has the potential to become another Steam and if it does, God help us all. When I was mayor 21-years-ago I spent half a day at Lydiard when the same plans were being talked about and we didn't have any money then either."

The project is now expected to fall unless another backer can be found and the year-long feasibility study and £3.8m Heritage Lottery bid will be withdrawn.

The derelict building was purchased by Thamesdown Council in 1943 under the direction of the then town clerk, David Murray John.

Nobody from Lydiard was available to comment.