AN extension to the existing highways depot at Newland, near Malvern, is wanted by Worcestershire County Council.

The council has submitted a planning application for a prefabricated office building and the creation of 30 new parking spaces.

"We want to get the guys making the decisions about the roads next to the guys who are actually doing the work," said Jon Fraser, the council's network control manager.

The Malvern Hills highways partnership is currently based in Avenue Road, Malvern.

The extension to the Newland depot is said to be independent of a proposed reshuffle of the county's partnerships.

The council is about to go out to consultation on cutting the number of highway partnerships, currently based on district boundaries, from six to three.

Under the proposal, the Malvern partnership would be merged with the one in Worcester.

The aim is to save money on overheads, so more can be spent on maintenance, said Mr Fraser.

He said the council would still keep an office in Malvern, although calls would be routed through the Customer Contact Centre at Malvern Library.

But Unison, the trade union representing council staff, is sceptical about the proposed changes.

Branch secretary Adrian Gregson said: "We're not convinced that service delivery will improve.

"We also expect to see redundancies and we'd be opposed to that, because there are already issues of unfilled vacancies and overwork in the service."