KENNET and North Wiltshire Primary Care Trust is back-peddling furiously after its planning application for a smoking shelter outside its Devizes HQ was criticised by local councillors.

The trust has submitted an application to Kennet District Council for a shelter to be placed in a parking bay far enough from the prestigious front entrance of Southgate House to be out of sight of visitors to the building.

But Coun Ray Taylor, district councillor for the south ward where Southgate House is located, said the trust was scoring an own goal by catering for its smoking employees.

He said: "It really does send out the wrong message. I know they are doing it with the best of intentions and, as an ex-smoker myself, I sympathise with the employees who might use it but there are alternatives."

Viv Alexander, chairman of Roundway Parish Council, also thought it was the worst possible publicity for the trust.

He said: "The National Health Service has no money for doctors, nurses or hospitals but it has apparently got money to spend on things like this.

"We are going to meetings being told about the sorry plight the trust is in financially and then we hear they are planning this kind of thing. They ought not to be promoting smoking."

But Karen Pedley, the trust's communications director, said: "The idea for a smoking shelter has been mooted for a very long time, since the Wiltshire Health Authority had its headquarters here. The planning application went in as a matter of course, because it was already in the pipeline.

"But we realise we need to think about this more deeply.

"We are now rethinking the whole thing and need to talk to our members of staff to find out their opinions."

Sympathy for the trust's position came from a surprise source this week the anti-smoking campaign group Action on Smoking and Health.

Research manager for ASH, Amanda Sandford, said: "It is up to the trust to make a judgement on this. They are obviously not going to allow smoking in the building, but do they say "tough" or recognise the fact that smokers will go outside and smoke? In the first case, smokers may just congregate around the doors, which makes a very bad impression, or they can be given somewhere to go where they will be able to smoke in private.

"Until smokers form less than ten per cent of the population, we will have to cater for them in some way."