GOVERNMENT grants, lottery cash, legacies and private companies could help to fund the new £35million museum to house the relics of Southend’s Saxon king.

Southend Council will only be able to stump up £10million from its own coffers to fund the “world-class” museum submerged into the cliffs, which would fix the landslip at the same time.

The four-storey museum will showcase the Saxon King treasures and also feature a 150-seat auditorium and planetarium, a 200-seat high-quality restaurant with a three-storey 200-space car park below. It is expected to take between five and ten years to build.

Derek Jarvis, Tory councillor for culture, said about £25million would have to be found from alternative sources because the council would only be likely to commit £10million to the scheme.

He said: “We know we will not fund the bulk of the museum from our own resources.

“I wouldn’t like to put a proportion on it, but it would probably be a smaller proportion. It would probably be less than £10million of the total.

“We’ve no fixed idea ultimately about how the funding will come together.

“We’ve got to seek, search and pursue every avenue.

“It could be benefactors, or donations or heritage lottery funding.

“We are dipping in the well and not sure what we will be coming up with.”

But Mr Jarvis and Nick Harris, the council’s head of culture, insist, despite any private investment, the council would keep control of running the new museum.

Mr Jarvis said: “I’m fairly confident we would be managing and running the museum.

“We wouldn’t pursue anything that would put us in a straightjacket.

“The building would be multi-functional, as well as the museum and the collection.

“An aspect of that might lend itself to private investment.”

It is hoped the top floor of the development – featuring the restaurant – could be used throughout the day and into the night, when access to the museum and gallery floors would be closed off.

Architect Andy Titterton, of AEW, said the auditorium and planetarium could be made available for hire for commercial use.

Mr Jarvis mentioned the new Tate St Ives gallery, in Cornwall, and the Sage Gateshead building, in Newcastle, as examples of major developments funded with a mixture of private and public investment.

Tate St Ives gets about a third of its funding from the Government’s Department of Culture, Media and Sport, while the rest is raised from admissions and membership, commercial sponsorship, trusts and foundations.

Mr Jarvis also said the current museum building, in Victoria Avenue, which is Grade II listed, and the Beecroft Gallery could be put to use somehow when they are empty and new museum up and running.

He said: “The current museum and the gallery have a joint market value of between £5million to £6million, estimated in 2008.

“We have no plans to sell them off, but they do have a value which we will use in our funding approach.

“We have no planned use for them at the moment, but the museum building could make an ideal gallery in its own right, for example.”