WYCOMBE District Council may take out Compulsory Purchase Orders (CPOs) on properties in High Wycombe to help Chiltern Railways, Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College (BCUC) and Amersham and Wycombe College realise their development plans.

The idea, according to confidential council documents seen by the Free Press, is that if landowners will not sell to the three organisations, the council will take out CPOs and the organisations will repay every penny of the council's costs.

The cabinet says all the developments fit in with what the council wants in its masterplan for the town.

Chiltern Railways wants the listed goods shed and car parking land next to it for long-promised station improvements. The council is keen to have a bus interchange at the station.

Amersham and Wycombe College wants to move to Desborough. The council owns most of the land needed, but not one key site, occupied by builders' merchants Grant and Stone and owned by the Plumridge family, which does not want to sell.

Moving the college fits in with council plans to improve the area.

BCUC, now it is not going to build a completely new campus at CompAir in Hughenden, wants to expand onto land across Abbey Way, including Wycombe fire station, the Liberal Club and the Royal British Legion.

The new fire station is planned in Desborough. But the other two organisations do not want to sell.

The council sees the area across Abbey Way as an arts focus for the town.

The cabinet has agreed to move forward if necessary with the college and railway station CPOs.

But the BCUC plan is still in limbo, after the Conservative group refused to back it. The main objector at the group meeting was former council leader Roger Colomb.

He said: "The college only has a vague idea of what they want to do and it is premature to say we will CPO properties."

He said BCUC's previous plans had come to nothing and the current ones depended on huge profits from land sales including the Wellesbourne campus in his ward.

The cabinet reckons it can get the CPOs under the 2004 Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act.

Council leader Lesley Clarke told the Free Press the three areas of development fitted council plans, but CPOs would only be used as a last resort.

She said the council supported BCUC. "We have to ensure it stays in the town and this would ensure they have what they need,"

Alan Fulford, Independent Tory councillor and former cabinet colleague of Cllr Colomb, also questioned whether the council should intervene in the market to help private organisations.

He called for a full council debate, saying: "We are being asked to take a huge leap of faith for some flaky concept of what is good for the town."