FEARS have emerged that more than 100 Southend town centre parking spaces could be lost following the creation of £50million development of the Seaway car park, off Lucy Road.

Cambridge-based Turnstone Estates is working in partnership with Southend Council on the huge project, exclusively revealed in the Echo last week.

It will include a cinema, restaurants and a hotel, but at a public inspection of the Southend Central Area Action Plan it was revealed the current 661 car parking spaces will be reduced to 540 - that’s a loss of 121 spaces.

Southend businessman Philip Miller isn’t happy.

He said the loss would cause gridlock in the town.

Mr Miller, managing director of the Stockvale Group, which owns Adventure Island and Sealife Adventure, said: “I have expressed concern for some months that Turnstone will not retain the current 661much-needed spaces at Seaway when they submit a planning application for the proposed cinema, national chain restaurants and hotel development, to be built on the publicly owned car park.

“At this week’s public examination of the Southend Central Area Action Plan, it seems that all my suspicions have been confirmed. Turnstone’s transport consultant, when questioned during the proceedings, declared that Turnstone have only agreed to a total of 540 car parking spaces on the Seaway site.”

Mr Miller added”The 540 doesn’t even replace the spaces lost because of the development, let alone providing the 1,000 or so spaces required for a development such as the one proposed. There will only be one outcome if this development - increased gridlock on our roads, residents trapped in their homes and businesses going out of business.”

Tim Deacon, managing director of Turnstone Estates said the figures could be revised if the planning inspector decided more parking provision was needed. He said: “A transport consultation confirmed under our currently modelling, what the scheme is being modelled on, there should be 540 spaces but what we are waiting to do is to see how the inspector responds to that hearing and what car parking spaces we will need to provide .

“If planning policy tells us we may need to do more or less then we may need to do that.”