WINCHESTER civic chiefs will miss a deadline for a review of how it works as recommended by the report into the Silver Hill fiasco.

An independent report by Claer Lloyd Jones called on the city council to conduct a review of governance and create a new constitution by May 2016.

The audit committee chairman Neil Cutler said that was "impossible" because of the lack of time.

Tory councillor Rose Burns and Lib Dem Margot Power have drawn up an action plan to address the failures that benighted the £150m Silver Hill scheme.

Among their ideas was to bring back the old-style committee system which saw bodies of councillors exercise much greater power than under the present cabinet system.

The ideas were thrashed out at the audit committee, tasked with drawing up ideas for the cabinet.

Cllr Burns stressed that Cllr Kim Gottlieb, whose successful judicial review helped derail Silver Hill, had no input into their suggestions.

Council chief executive Simon Eden said he wanted to make clear the Ms Lloyd Jones had not accused senior officers "of lacking the necessary professional and commercial skills", something that had been seized upon by council critics.

Mr Eden said Ms Lloyd Jones had clarified that to say that it had been suggested to her. "She did not criticise council staff. It had been put to her and that is quite different."

Audit committee chairman Neil Cutler said the committee accepted the report and he did not want to it kicked into the long grass.

Cllr Power said: "Our decision making has not been good during Silver Hill. This audit committee should try to improve the quality of that decision-making."

Cllr Ian Tait said a lot of the criticism of councillors and the officers was with the benefit of hindsight.

He said: "It's like Donald Rumsfeld. It's 'we have to know what we don't know' to ask the right questions."

The committee voiced disagreements with some of Lloyd-Jones' criticisms, such as that the council is hostile to competition.

Cllr Dominic Hiscock said she was referring to the fact that the River Park Leisure Centre contract has not been tendered in more than 20 years and that the original Silver Hill scheme just after the Millennium should have been opened to tender as should changes in 2014.

Mr Eden warned against the council "beating ourselves up. The council sometimes needs to be prouder of what it does, because the negative message is affecting staff morale and the way staff work."

Cllr Tait said the council should not just listen to the critics of Silver Hill. "We mustn't just listen to the minority of people. We have to meet the aspirations of the whole community not just the people who turn up to meetings. It is not the people that you see and hear, it is the people that you don't see and hear.”