A SEX shop and other businesses will be forced to quit their premises to make way for a new regional business centre.

Council chiefs are applying to the secretary of state for compulsory purchase powers to buy off business in the former C&A building, pictured, in Above Bar Street and Gibbs Road.

They stand in the way of plans to redevelop the building for use by Capita, a business outsourcing giant that last year won a ten-year contract to run key council services.

The building is part of wider plans to revamp the area as a cultural quarter with an arts complex, swanky flats and public square.

Businesses left trading in the C&A building, mostly owned by the council, are Pot Black and Mostyns soft furnishing, who are on short leases.

Others set to be turfed out are trading as The Private (sex) Shop, Tony's Café and Lucid, a clothing retailer and tattooist.

Southampton City Council has denied heavy handed tactics to secure the building which it wants to transform into a " high quality multi-storey office building with a lively street frontage.''.

A spokesman said: "We are talking to the occupiers or their appointed agents and seeking to agree terms by negotiation but have sought the compulsory purchase order (and in some cases served landlord and tenant notices) to ensure we have a route to gain possession of the properties should agreements not be reached.'' The council plans to sell the C&A building for redevelopment and possibly lease back two floors.

Capita would take four floors for its operations and hopes to attract business from across the region.

The council last month set aside £1.75m in its budget to buy out the properties after it declined to accept funding from SEEDA, the regional development agency, in the form of a repayable loan with a profit share arrangement.