DEVIZES MP Michael Ancram has condemned the proposed closure of the town's magistrates courts as a retrograde step.

All business normally dealt with at the temporary building in Northgate Gardens will eventually be moved to a new court building in Salisbury. This means defendants, witnesses, solicitors and licensees will have to travel much further.

Mr Ancram has vowed to fight the move, made necessary by the Lord Chancellor's Department's insistence that Wiltshire has too many underused courtrooms. It has told the Wiltshire Magistrates Courts' Committee it will not fund a new courthouse in Salisbury until it closes at least six courtrooms.

The two courts at Devizes and three at Trowbridge are under threat because their facilities for holding prisoners in custody have been condemned as sub-standard and it would cost too much to upgrade them.

A decision to close Trowbridge courthouse in March of next year, and to close Devizes as soon as new premises are ready in Salisbury, was made by the Magistrates Courts' Committee in November but it has to go out to consultation before any action is taken.

Mr Ancram said: "To close the Devizes courthouse would be to close the remaining magistrates' court in Kennet district and, indeed, in my constituency."

He said: "It would make a nonsense of local justice as the creation of alternative courts are all a long way away and in areas with no affinity to the people of Kennet.

"It would be an act of centralisation and one which is the thin end of the wedge for local justice. In the end magistrates' courts will have no value as they no longer reflect local feeling and ethos."