MORE than 1,000 people have today signed a petition warning the £150 million Silver Hill scheme will wreck Winchester.

Campaigners battling the project are rallying support online ahead of three crunch meetings on its future next week.

The city council will decide next Wednesday whether to accept submissions from the developer, TH Real Estate, which would send the project 'unconditional' – the point of no return.

The petition, urging local government secretary Greg Clark to call in the scheme of shops and homes, gathered 1,000 signatures in around 12 hours.

It was launched on Wednesday by Winchester Deserves Better, the anti-Silver Hill campaign led by city councillor Kim Gottlieb.

The petition statement says: "Dull and uniform mass of such size will suffocate the appeal and character of an historic cathedral city. It will jeopardize the city’s future vitality, and its outdated retail concept will emasculate the city’s thriving high street, the oldest in northern Europe."

Cllr Gottlieb told the Chronicle: “Next week's report to cabinet regarding Silver Hill could have been written by George Orwell, except that he would have been more careful about checking his facts. Councillors are being poorly advised on many critical aspects such as the timing and risks involved in pursuing any alternative scheme, and such as 'best consideration' which councillors have a statutory duty to achieve.

"The advice councillors are receiving is from the same team that lost the judicial review, so it is perhaps no surprise that they are proceeding as if it had never happened, and ignoring the council's overarching legal obligation to procure the contract."