THE chief executive of Preston City Council has defended regeneration plans that will spell the end of the controversial bus station.

The Tithebarn Regeneration scheme has finally been unveiled, after two years on the drawing board.

The £132 million plans include a hi-tech new bus station, cinema, and European-style city 'quarters', which if approved will reshape the centre by 2009.

After the plans were revealed, Jim Carr, chief executive of the council, said: "We are aiming to be the third city of the North West."

The council has worked with architects, planners, transport experts and money-men to draw up the scheme, which they hope will create between 3,000 and 5,000 jobs over the next decade.

The scheme reveals wide-reaching plans to regenerate the historic Tithebarn area around the bus station, and taking in the city centre near the Harris Museum, Town Hall, and Guild Hall. Included are a new, compact bus station, a knowledge centre and library, redesigned market, a huge department store, fitness centre and a cinema, as well as office space and homes.

But members of the Ssave the Preston Bus Station Campaign have been fighting to keep the giant transport hub open since the plan was first aired.

Campaigner Ron Yates said: "It's a very good facility for the people of Preston and the district. All they need to do is knock some of the north end of the station down. I don't see the bus station as being too big."

But Jim Carr, chief executive of Preston City Council, says the plans have been worth the wait.

He said: "They have got a view that the bus station is a magnificent structure that should be preserved at all costs. But it has created an island where people have to cross a busy apron or go down a subway they consider to be threatening.

"We did look at how we could integrate the existing bus station into a new development. But the results were that we didn't think that we were providing the sort of quality bus station that people were looking for.

The plans will be available at the Town Hall for a week, then at Queen's Drive Primary School, in Black Bull Lane, Fulwood, on June 13, from 7pm.