MULTI-million pound plans to transform the heart of Abingdon have been abandoned, the Abingdon Herald can reveal.

The global investment company which holds the lease for the Charter area behind Bury Street has said it cannot find a supermarket to anchor the £50m revamp.

As a result, Aberdeen Asset Management has asked Vale of White Horse District Council, which owns the land, if it can scrap their redevelopment agreement.

Council spokeswoman Natalie Ellis said: "Because of the changing retail market for supermarkets, they've struggled to attract one to anchor a redevelopment.

"As a result, they have approached us to terminate the Charter redevelopment.

"It's not in Abingdon's interest to continue to pursue a supermarket development in the current market environment, so we are considering this request."

She said the council was "committed" to finding alternative ways of refreshing the Charter.

Blueprints released by the council in 2011 detailed grand plans for the area: a 700-space car park to replace the current cramped one just off Stert Street; a new supermarket, and moving the library and health centre into larger buildings.

It was a plan which Tony de Vere, then leader of the Vale council, hailed as "one of the biggest developments in Abingdon's history".

The fate of the much-delayed makeover was perhaps sealed in 2014, when supermarket giant Sainsbury's pulled out of plans to move into the Charter.

District councillor and leader of Abingdon Town Council Sandy Lovatt said: "It's disappointing that Aberdeen couldn't find the means to develop and improve the Charter which certainly does need updating significantly.

"I'm please the district has engaged with economic advisors to come up with some other options, there are some interesting ideas.

"It's public money we are talking about so the district is moving cautiously and I'm sure it will all come to the public."

The council confirmed it would go ahead with a £800,000 update to the Charter car park, which Mr Lovatt described as "quite a nasty place".

Aberdeen Asset Management inherited the lease on the Charter area two years ago when it absorbed former lease holders Scottish Widows, which had completed an overhaul of the Bury Street Precinct in 2012.

Despite its £4.5m price tag, many still feel that redevelopment fell flat.

District councillor for Sutton Courtenay Gervase Duffield said: "We were given a dolled-up 1970s-style thing which everyone knew was useless.

"Abingdon is a pleasant town - it is too nice and too historic a place to be treated with third-rate development.

"If you look at the local towns, Witney and Newbury, they have all got new precincts.

"Abingdon does need redevelopment, not just tarting up."

Ian Collett, who owns The Bookstore in the precinct, said: "It looks quite nice but they built these two huge units – we assumed they had tenants lined up but they didn't."

He complained that the retailers which eventually filled the first floor units - New Look, and Superdrug, which confirmed its move last week - were already in the precinct.

He added: "All we are doing is shuffling them about. We are getting a restaurant (Wildwood opposite Costa) but that will cater for people in the town, not for people to go shopping. That's why footfall is not great".

The Vale said it would enforce an existing agreement with Aberdeen Asset Management that the company must finish redeveloping the 'bookends' of the precinct, including the empty former Co-op unit and the soon-to-be-empty Superdrug unit.