MAJOR regeneration plans for the centre of Salisbury will go on display later this year, Wiltshire council has confirmed.

Decision-makers agreed to push ahead with redeveloping the whole Maltings and Central car park site in one “comprehensive” scheme alongside the shopping centre’s owner, TH Real Estate, at a meeting this week.

The entire project was on hold while the council tried to find the cash to clear building rubble buried beneath the site, to make the scheme financially viable.

Now £6million of government funding has been secured, it looks like the scheme is back on track.

After cabinet members discussed the project on Tuesday, partly behind closed doors, economic development chief Fleur de Rhe Philipe said: “This is good news for Salisbury city centre.

“TH Real Estate will bring forward development proposals for the site, which will go out to consultation with the community later this year.”

As previously reported in the Journal, a survey at the site found areas where soil and building material had historically been used to raise the ground level, causing stability problems.

This meant any development would require special, deep foundations and extra work to prepare the land. And the extra cost made the proposed, mixed-use development financially “unviable”.

But the council recently secured government funding for the work through the Swindon and Wiltshire Local Enterprise Partnership (SWLEP), and the plan will now go ahead.

The Maltings’ previous owner, a partnership involving Sainsbury’s, had shown “limited interest” in working with the council and Stanhope to redevelop the wider site, which includes Central car park and the coach park.

So planners decided to approach the scheme in phases, first developing land owned completely by the council, and later the Maltings.

But TH Real Estate (then TIAA Henderson) bought the long leasehold on the shopping centre for a reported £25million in November 2014, after outbidding Wiltshire Council.

Now the new owner wants to be involved in a “comprehensive” scheme from the start, the council says.