DISTRICT council leader, Conservative John Campion, has snubbed calls to hold a referendum over the local authority's £10 million single site plan from opposition party councillors, branding the idea "political mischief".

Mr Campion said blueprints to sell off existing Wyre Forest District Council buildings and offices and move to a single site in Kidderminster were still in the early planning stages. He added: "I think what the public are interested in, quite rightly, is the services we provide. People don't care where council offices are, what they care about is whether their bins are emptied."

He was responding to a call from Howard Martin, the council's Health Concern leader, to hold a Wyre Forest-wide referendum on the proposals.

Mr Martin said: "The plans are moving on and decisions are going to have to be taken fairly soon and it hasn't really been appropriate until now, when plans were more advanced, to put it to the public.

"At some stage in the future, the council leader has said there will be a public consultation but we don't think that goes far enough and now is the time to raise the project's profile."

In October last year, the district council, under then leader Stephen Clee, agreed the single site move in principle at a meeting behind closed doors.

Under plans tabled at that meeting, council bosses approved a move to a purpose-built headquarters on the five-acre council owned Crossley Park site, in Kidderminster. Those proposals would also see the Green Street depot transferred to Churchfields, with a planned sell-off of the Stourport Civic Centre's current site and its replacement with a new building.

Mr Martin said taxpayers concerned about increased traffic levels through Horsefair, Kidderminster, had been contacting him about the depot development.

He added: "Members of Broadwaters and Horsefair, people on Stoney Lane and York Street will be blighted by the placing of the depot on that side of the old bridge."

He added there had been flooding on the Crossley Park site in July and queried the council's sums over both the Kidderminster and Stourport Civic Centre schemes.

Mr Campion said the district council was still deciding the "best way" to dispose of the sites and would present detailed plans before full council in early 2008.

He added: "It's important to remember the single site idea wasn't mine. It was something we adopted from Health Concern."