A LEADING Southampton councillor has resigned from an inquiry into how public consultation was carried out on a prestige multi-million-pound inner-city regeneration scheme.

Former Labour group leader and the man identified with making the £300m WestQuay shopping centre happen, Councillor John Arnold stood down from the scrutiny panel investigating regeneration projects to give evidence on the scheme.

Initially he had hoped to present his report on the public consultation for the regeneration of Bevois Valley and St Mary's - and stay on the panel investigating community involvement. But after discussions with his fellow panel members, he changed his mind.

Cllr Arnold told members of the panel that the consultation was fatally flawed.

Residents were not told from the start how the government wanted the £26m they were giving to the area to be spent. He said: "It should have been made clear from the start that taking St Mary Street back to how it was 30 years ago was not achievable with the government's money - it was not what the regeneration was all about.

"Had the consultation been handled differently, in my view, we would probably have had much more community involvement."

He admitted he was aware almost immediately there were problems with the consultation. When asked why he had allowed it to continue, Cllr Arnold said: "Those of us who had reservations about the outcome didn't have the tools or established procedures to ensure there was assessment of the views gained through consultation."

Later the panel heard evidence from head of community regeneration John Tunney, who said none of the original officers who led the so-called SRB2 bid back in 1995 was now with the council. As far as he could tell there was no direct community involvement in drawing up the original bid and the government was aware of that. It was only once the money was agreed that efforts were made to speak to residents. There were difficulties in the early days because there were no established community groups and no groundwork had been done to gauge local opinion, he explained.

"But many of the community's aspirations have been fulfilled. We've got an active Kingsland Market still running, the subway has been closed, there are 100 new homes for rent in Bevois Valley and major improvements to St Mary Street," he said.

Adrian Millward, who manages the £20m Outer Shirley regeneration project or SRB6, said lessons had been learnt from the SRB2 programme and the community was involved right from the start with deciding how the money should be spent in their area.