THE transformation of King Street has been scrapped after Cheshire East Council told town bosses it would not happen without the full support of the businesses based on the street.

Earlier this year Cheshire East Council unveiled a design plan that would see King Street transformed into a 'shared space' scheme.

The proposal would give greater priority to pedestrians in the central section of the street, while maintaining through traffic and, where possible, on-street parking. The design concept included wider footways, raised pedestrian crossings, dropped kerbs and higher quality materials.

And in February, the authority revealed the government had awarded the authority a grant of £2million to enable the works to take place.

But it has emerged today, Wednesday, that those plans are now 'dead in the water' after Cheshire East Council decided that due to a lack of support from the business community it does not have a mandate to progress and 'as such will not progress with the project at this time'.

However, Cllr Tony Dean, town mayor, told the Guardian a scheme for King Street was still on the table despite today's development. 

Figures obtained by the Guardian showed that 75 per cent of 600 plus residents were in favour of the scheme proposed this year but only 37 per cent of responses from 63 businesses on the street were in favour.

As such, the council deemed the project could not happen.

Andrew Malloy, chairman of the town centre working group on the Knutsford Town Plan, told the Guardian it was a 'big surprise' to hear the news the scheme was being mothballed.

"We're not pleased as we have been working on this for eight years," he said.

"We had promises that nothing would stop this from happening, funding was in place and now we have been told that one part of the community doesn't want it, so it won't happen.

"It's history repeating itself. The businesses didn't want it last time and there was a march down King Street and the council listened to them. Now it has happened again.

"The vast majority say there is something wrong with King Street but some businesses say it's fine.

"The thing that concerns me going forward is that if it goes into the Neighbourhood Plan, it ends with a referendum that lies with people who have a vote in Knutsford. And not many business owners are residents in Knutsford so they won't have a say - they are not going to like that.

"It was a surprise for all of us as we have been told all the way along that it would happen because the people wanted it. They said to us it didn't matter what the businesses wanted.

"Cheshire East has said the money will stay there but the proposed project won't happen."