WYCOMBE District Council, promoter of the £95 million Western Sector shopping and leisure centre development in the town, is sitting impotently this week as financing plans for the scheme collapsed.

It will be a miracle if at a crunch meeting with top councillors on Thursday, MAB, the Western Sector developer, names a new financial backer to replace Great Portland Estates (GPE) which withdrew.

This is not the first obstacle the scheme has encountered the plan faced a costly High Court battle with Tesco over demolishing its Newlands store which Tesco lost in May.

GPE pulled out last week after months of speculation that it was no longer prepared to back the scheme to create the 445,000 square foot development, with its department store (House of Fraser), shops, cafes, library, cinema and bus station.

MAB will say nothing more than that they are negotiating with another firm and that work on site will still start in September 2002.

But there is no formal promise of money as yet, and no detailed planning application. The application has to be with the council by the end of July for it to be considered and approved before the compulsory purchase orders on the businesses run out in a year's time.

Wycombe District Council, the third party in the mega scheme, is now praying MAB's confidence is justified.

The bad news broke last week when it was announced that a legal argument between GPE and MAB had come to an end in an out of court agreement.

The case should have been heard on July 3, after GPE said this spring it would go to the High Court to see if it had to be bound by its funding agreement with MAB.

But the writing has been on the wall since November last year when the Free Press reported that GPE might pull out.

Cllr Alan Fulford, the district council cabinet member with responsibility for the scheme, said: "All we have been told is that there is another potential funder, which the company has dealt with before.

"I expect a new funder for the same scheme as quickly as possible. But finding someone to come up with £95 million is not a five minute job. They say they have an alternative funder and we shall get a planning application in on time. I have to take this at face value. But I want them to understand they have to deliver."

Also making things uncertain is the risk that MAB will have to pay up to £25 million to Tesco as compensation for vacating its premises on the site. The district council has taken out compulsory purchase orders for Tesco and for another 12 businesses.

But the amount MAB will have to find in compensation will be decided by a lands tribunal.

MAB wants to pay £8 million but Tesco wants £25 million. Anything at the top of the scale could hit the viability of the project.

But MAB may not know how much compensation will have to be paid until after the date by which they have things tied up, so there is a risk involved.

Wycombe District Council has set aside about £20 million towards the scheme, but there is no more money after that, and the risk is with MAB.

Cllr Fulford, who agreed that the present situation could be described as a shambles and that things were not looking wonderful, said he did not want the present scheme to fall through because it had taken so long to get it this far.

He said: "We know from the retail market that there is untapped potential in High Wycombe."

Cllr Fulford said of the meeting on Thursday that he would be looking for positive results.

Great Portland Estates decided to go to court because it was fed up with two years of delays because of Tesco's unsuccessful battle against the council's compulsory purchase order.

This went as far as the High Court and set the development back by about 18 months. In the meantime, GPE decided its future was no longer in town centre or sub-regional shopping centres and changed its whole business strategy.

The company is selling its assets in other parts of the country and reinvesting in the more profitable London and south east areas.

If the Western Sector agreements had been on target, GPE would have been too far down the road to be able to consider pulling out.

The former chairman of the Western Sector steering group Cllr Roger Colomb, now district council leader, resigned his post because target dates were not being met.

Cllr Fulford took over before Christmas with a mission to deliver.