WILTSHIRE could lose its long-awaited multi-million pound Record Office altogether if campaigners for a Trowbridge site raise a storm with the Heritage Lottery Fund, county council leader Coun Peter Chalke has warned.

The council's cabinet has given the go-ahead for a bid to be made to the National Lottery for funding.

But Coun Chalke urged protesters to accept the democratically made decision of the county council and Swindon Borough Council instead of endangering the entire project.

"The Heritage Lottery Fund may decide it is too controversial and then the whole project would fall," he said.

"That is a distinct danger. Do these people want to see the records taken away to London?

"The decision has been made let's start to move on and talk about more important things for Trowbridge, like the regeneration of the town."

The development of a new record office and heritage centre is a joint project with Swindon Borough Council.

Swindon councillors were due to consider the Lottery bid last night.

The entire project will cost around £12.1 million and the bid will seek funding of up to £5 million.

A final decision will not be made until April 2004.

The new record office is to be built on the cattle market in Cocklebury Road, Chippenham, but a dedicated group of protesters has continued to press for a site in Trowbridge, fearing Chippenham was hard to reach for people living in the south of the county.

Charles Evans, from Salisbury, said he had already lobbied the Heritage Lottery Fund about his preference for the Trowbridge site, and he would continue to do so.

"Many people have written to them," he said. "This is the most crackpot scheme. It will cost an arm and a leg. If they had not started off in the wrong direction it would have been built by now."

Mr Evans said two sites in Trowbridge should have been investigated and he was confident he and fellow campaigners could still effect a change.

"Nothing is certain in love and war and this is war," he said.

Tom Craig, the heritage services manager at the county council, said the Heritage Lottery bid had taken several months to compile.

The Heritage Lottery Fund will assess the detailed proposals.

An interim decision is expected before April 2004, when more information might be required.

An exhibition of the plans will tour the county throughout April.