IT IS costing £132 million and it has been years in the planning.

So it is staggering to think that Swindon's brand new Great Western Hospital is short on space before it has even opened.

No one likes to say 'we told you so', but the facts are there for all to see.

Swindon's population is on the rise and somewhere, somehow, the calculations have gone awry.

Hopefully, the plans being considered by the NHS Trust to alleviate the problem cutting office space and considering further expansion will work.

But this is all going to cost more money, and when you consider the expense of the building in the first place, you wonder why it should cost any more.

At the moment, it appears there are more questions than answers.

But if private finance schemes like this one are to prove the critics wrong, those answers will have to be good.