WINCHESTER city councillors have once again called on civic chiefs to review the multi-million-pound Station Approach scheme.

They say their concerns have still not been addressed as they questioned the development team at Overview and Scrutiny committee on Monday.

This comes less than a month after the same committee called on the entire process to be restarted as they believed the design competition was flawed.

Last Friday, Cabinet voted to pledge £1.2m of council money to progress the scheme to the next phase. This decision is due to be debated at Full Council tonight.

The Cabinet also voted to appoint bidder B, believed to be Hopkins Architects, from London, as the designer.

These decisions were cross-examined by the committee who questioned the sum of money that would be needed to progress the scheme.

Cllr Kim Gottlieb, who challenged the council over the now-defunct Silver Hill scheme, said: “I am concerned that we are putting forward a lot of money to progress the scheme to see where if it goes anywhere. That is a lot of money. There is no way anyone here would do that if it was their own money.”

He added: “I am particularly concerned that we are stuck with scheme B. Changing the curtains is not going to improve things.

“It is a scheme that was rejected by the design jury, the City of Winchester Trust and many residents. Why are we then still pursuing this?”

In response, council leader Stephen Godfrey said the scheme was in a prime position to receive £7.7m worth of Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEP) funding.

“We need to show LEP that we are serious about this project, otherwise our position in the standings will drop and we may not get it. They want to see shovel ready projects with serious commitments. Pledging the £1.2m and taking the scheme forwards shows them that we are.

“We have a development that will keep this city as a business city rather than a residential city.”

The cabinet meeting also revealed that more than 1,000 jobs could be created by the scheme.

This was the claim from Rob Turner, associate director at Grant Thornton, who calculated the economic benefits the scheme could bring.

He said around 500 workers would be needed for the construction and around 500 more would be created by the retail units and offices.

Mr Turner also suggested that £30million would be pumped into the local economy each year.

"This data is based on the assumptions at this early stage," he admitted. "It has been gathered from information which have of similar developments."

However, Michael Carden, vice chairman of the City of Winchester Trust, called for the scheme to be halted: "A judicious pause now would be a great deal safer than ploughing ahead with a flawed process that is almost bound to lead to further and greater problems.

"The scheme could then be change to introduce both traffic and architectural improvements."

Nevertheless, others are backing the proposals, saying they are in need of more office space.

Paul Marsland, partner at Lane Clark and Peacock, who have had premises in the city for 25 years, said: "We love being in the city, but need more space. We want to keep growing but the lack of available space in Winchester is making it harder to want to stay here. We may be forced to move.

"Time is of the essence and I think we need to go ahead with the scheme."

Plans for the Cattle Market look set to be postponed for 18 months.