As part of the hugely controversial Vision for Newbury 2025, the council is selling the 13-acre site so developers can turn it into 200 flats, a 400-space multistorey car park, with bars and cafes surrounding a piazza.

By scrapping the four-storey height limit to Newbury, the council will have to get around it’s own planning policy for the heavily protected town centre, which says: “the council will not permit development which would harm or prejudice the special character or appearance of a conservation area.”

The council has already emptied a terrace of six houses of tenants, and is prepared to force the Quaker meeting house, Conservative Club and the landlord of Countryside Books to sell their land as part of the deal.

Significantly, workmen are expected on site in August 2007, four months before the cinema is finished over the road.

Temporary parking facilities will need to be found for the hundreds of council staff and commuters who depend on these car parks. The bus station also still has to be relocated.