TEIGNBRIDGE councillors will next week be asked to contribute an additional £600,000 towards a new cinema in Newton Abbot due to increased costs.

Plans were submitted in June for the new four screen cinema in the corner of Market Square, described as the ‘transformational’ part of the town centre’s regeneration, which also involves pedestrian improvements to Queen Street and the creation of more cycle routes.

Using part of £9.2 million in government cash awarded to the town by the Future High Streets Fund [FHSF], Teignbridge District Council hopes to construct a building shell for the cinema, which is then handed over to Scott Cinemas for them to complete the fit-out.

However, a report to be presented to an extraordinary meeting of the authority next week states: ‘Due to general cost inflation which has occurred as a consequence of external national and international factors there has been increasing pressures on costs and budgets.

‘Whilst original budgets allowed for both cost inflation and contingencies, it was not foreseen that inflation would escalate to the extent that it has.’

As a result, councillors will be asked to agree a further £600,000 towards the scheme.

‘The consequence of not committing the additional capital will place the cinema project in serious jeopardy and at high risk of being undeliverable,’ the report says, adding it will ‘cause the entire FHSF project and its transformational impact on Newton Abbot and its surrounds to become a missed opportunity.’

Councillors will meet on Tuesday [6 September] to consider the extra funding. The discussion will take place in private, with press and public excluded, because of what the council claims is the “commercially sensitive nature of the cinema plans.”