AFTER negotiations lasting more than three years Italian-style restaurant company Prezzo has dropped plans to open a restaurant in Andover’s historic Guildhall.

Instead, members of Test Valley Borough Council heard that a little-known fledgling company called Zippers is interested in moving in very quickly under broadly the same terms offered to Prezzo.

Zippers already runs a restaurant in historic Chatham Dockyard where, in addition to pizza, its menu includes Zipper burgers, shepherd’s pie and trio of Cumberland sausages – and for £2.95 children under ten can have two fishfingers and chips, ice cream and a soft drink.

Lib Dem leader Len Gates was scathing about how the council’s leadership had handled the matter.

“This has ripped the heart out of the town and left it on the operating table,” he said.

“The community has been weakened and taxpayers have been left with a loss of more than £200,000 – we have been told by members of the Cabinet that a deal was ‘imminent’.

“They have been in a hole and kept digging and now the hole is so deep that they can’t get out.”

Finance portfolio holder Peter Giddings agreed that Prezzo’s negotiations had dragged on for too long.

“At the end of these negotiations, Prezzo has decided that unfortunately with the economic situation it does not want to move to Andover,” he said.

But the individual who originally identified the Guildhall as a potential site is a member of the Zippers team and is pressing the council to move in – so something should be happening shortly.

Leader Ian Carr promised that the new offering from Zippers will be of a standard similar to Prezzo.

“It will bring a new company to Andover still broadly Italian with a wider menu,” he said.

The deal could be signed in a month although chief executive Roger Tetstall suggested that this should be doubled to ‘allow for lawyers’.

On 15 January Prezzo issued a trading update and told the London Stock Exchange that it is planning to open ten new restaurants this year.