No date has been set for opening the new Swindon museum and art gallery – and hosting Swindon’s collection of art and artefacts there may become a permanent option.

Although the council’s previous administration under the Conservatives had hoped to have the upper floor of the listed building in Euclid Street opened this year or next, work has only just started on the conversion of empty offices into exhibition spaces.

And the new cabinet member for heritage, arts and culture in the Labour administration, Marina Strinkovsky, says there is no firm date for the museum and gallery opening its doors.

She said: “Up until now the focus that I and museums manager Frances Yeo have had is to get the project started.

“We’ve been waiting so long that it needed real focus to get to this point.”

Ms Yeo said: “We will know much better how long it all might take when we’ve got the contractors and their sub-contractors in and on-site and when the museums team can come in and start on the fit out.”

Coun Strinkovsky added: “We’re not trying to be cagey or obstructive; I don’t want to give a date, then another, then a third.”

And it might be that the new museum and gallery, which will have about 40 per cent more display space that the previous one at Apsley House in Old Town, becomes the long-term home for the collections of art and historic artefacts owned by the council.

When the Civic Offices were proposed as a suitable space for the gallery and museum, members of the Conservative cabinet said it would be a temporary solution, albeit one that might be used for up to 10 years.

The plan was to build a new gallery and museum in that time as part of the cultural quarter in the town centre near the Kimmerfields business district – the whole thing being part of plans for the regeneration of town.

But Coun Strinkovsky said: “In the 10 weeks I’ve been in this job I’ve focussed on this. We will look at the plans for the town centre, but it might be that the spaces here become the permanent museum and art gallery, maybe not for all time, but for quite a long time.”

There has been no museum and gallery in Swindon for more than three years, when it closed for the first Covid-19 lockdown in March 2020.

The council then said the Georgian building was not suitable for the purpose and would cost too much to make safe and accessible.