THE “shopping experience” needs to be maintained at Bournemouth’s Castlepoint Centre during the four-year rebuild of its botched car park, its project director has said.

Forty-eight residents attended a public meeting hosted by the complex’s manager, Peter Matthews, at the Bishop of Winchester Academy on Friday night as plans for the rebuild were unveiled.

The car park, built by contractors Kier Group, has been beset with problems since 2003 when reports of falling concrete led to spaces being cordoned off.

Following extensive negotiations with insurance companies, it was agreed that Kier would oversee the rebuild, which is expected be completed by 2019 in five construction phases.

Presenting the plans, project director Alec Wood said: “Before you reach for the rotten eggs and throw them at me, I did not build the original car park.

“I have been working with Kier at Castlepoint looking at solutions to give you back a fully-functioning car park.

“The requirement to maintain a shopping experience at Castlepoint was paramount for the client and Peter and his team for operating it.”

Mr Matthews said before the first phase can begin, the work, which has already started on building 540 additional car parking spaces, needs to be completed. He added: “We are committed to having 2,500 car parking spaces, never below.

“When we opened we had 3,000 spaces. At this point in time we have 2,818 spaces – so there is a 15 per cent reduction in the number of spaces.”

He said since he started his job at Castlepoint in 2005 the car park has never been full and it has only come close to being full on two occasions.

He also reassured residents that no public money was being spent, adding: “There are a number of insurance companies who are involved.

“They take the risk. I don’t know who they all are and I don’t know that level of risk.

“What I do know is that the retailers aren’t paying for it, the local residents aren’t paying for it and Castlepoint is not paying for it.”