Government plans to save £6.2bn in 2010-11 could indirectly affect the regeneration of Swindon town centre after Chancellor George Osborne announced that a total of £270m would be cut from regional development agencies.

At the moment there are no concrete plans for where the cuts are coming, but preparing the way for the worst is the South West Rural Development Agency, which has several fingers in several pies including plans in place for the redevelopment of Regent Circus in the town centre.

The agency it is expecting to lose about £23mfrom its £300m budget for starters.

Agency chiefs were called to a meeting in Whitehall yesterday to be told to get out the knife and be prepared for drastic surgery. The £23m is not going to be enough Stephen Peacock, an executive director with the agency, said details were being worked out with the Government although nothing had yet been set in stone. But he was expecting decisions that would cause pain and this could affect the 320 people who work for the RDA and whose jobs are definitely threatened.

“But it is going to be complicated procedure because so many of our projects are linked,” he said.

Mr Peacock said 90 per cent of the RDA’s funding was tied up and legally contracted to projects which had been agreed. But he agreed that some projects could be scaled down and others could certainly be knocked on the head.

This would concur with the statement from SWRDA chief executive Jane Henderson who said earlier: “We don’t have £20m sitting in the bank waiting for things to do, so it will mean some tough decisions. We’ll be discussing with the Government over the next days or weeks exactly how that cut will be split between regions.

“It comes on top of a cut of £56m which we’ve already had to apply over the last two years.”

She did not rule out the possibility of projects having money withdrawn from them.

She said: “I’m conscious of the effect that it could have on our partners and businesses and communities.

“We have a lot of commitments already, but what we need to do is keep going with those projects which are most important to the future of our economy.”

Mr Peacock said until talks had taken place with the Government everything within the RDA remit was vulnerable.