A £200 million regeneration package for Winsford has been ‘cautiously welcomed’ by a town councillor.

The plans, which will go before Cheshire West and Chester Council's cabinet on Wednesday, could see the council commit to improving a number areas in the town.

These include working with the current leaseholder to ‘revitalise’ Winsford Cross Shopping Centre and the development of 300 new homes in the town centre.

The council is also working with partners to develop the former Greedy Pig site, as part of a wider Waterfront leisure and recreation area plan.

Cllr Malcolm Gaskill, Winsford Town Councillor for Swanlow Ward and former Vale Royal councillor, welcomed the news, but questioned whether the package will be delivered.

“It’s great news if it comes true,” the Lib Dem councillor said.

“When you look at it, it’s a bit like a kid’s Christmas list, a wish list.

“It’s the same things they were listing when they were developing the Neighbourhood Plan.

“It was all going to be absolutely marvellous, but of course nothing happened.”

The Winsford regeneration programme will be resourced over the next two years with £3.5 million from the councils’ Capital programme.

The rest of the money will be generated through the sale of council land, including the Verdin Exchange and Phoenix Depot. Both sites could provide up to 300 new houses between them.

Other improvements include to reinforce Town Park and High Street to link with the Waterfront and the wider Weaver Valley.

The Old High Street will re-established as a ‘highly visible, accessible location for independent business’, linking the town centre to the Waterfront.

Additionally, a council-owned 30ha site at the Winsford industrial estate could create around 2,000 jobs and bring in up to £90 million of investment.

The council is also said it is working with the leasehold owner of Winsford Cross Shopping Centre to provide larger and more flexible shop space, an improved market and increased community uses.

The borough council, which was Vale Royal Borough Council at the time, sold the lease to the Winsford Cross Shopping Centre to Marr Properties in 2007.

Plans to extend the shopping centre were drawn up and applied for before it was suddenly withdrawn.

“It all died of death,” Cllr Gaskill, who was a Vale Royal councillor at the time, said. “We couldn’t get any sense out of them.”

Negotiations have been ongoing ever since.

Cllr Gaskill said CWAC still own the freehold – the ownership of real property, or land – despite not owning the lease.

“Marr don’t have any money,” he said. “I suggest we take the lease off them.”

Cllr David Armstrong, cabinet member for legal and finance, confirmed an agreement has not yet been reached with Marr Properties.

He said: “Until it is absolutely a done deal, it is not a done deal, as all these things are that are commercially sensitive.

“Until it is signed off you can’t say whether it will happen.”

He said the package has been forward to ‘move things forward and lock it in for the foreseeable future’ and confirmed everything was ‘very much at the starting off stage’.

Cllr David Armstrong added that full consultations with Winsford residents will take place if the plans are approved by cabinet.