THE likely completion date for Hereford’s proposed £80 million retail development has been put back to 2014.

At a press conference this morning, Herefordshire Council also confirmed that it didn’t want work at the site to impact on the Queen’s visit to the city and the arrival of the Olympic Torch.

A deal that gets the development done has been “agreed” between funders British Land, the developers Stanhope and Hereford Futures.

But the deal cannot be signed until the council’s cabinet votes it through at a meeting next Thursday.

While approval is almost certain at cabinet, the decision will, with equal certainty, be called in for a scrutiny hearing – the scope of which has have yet to be decided – within a week.

Whatever comes out of the scrutiny hearing then goes back to cabinet where, at this stage, a final decision will probably be taken - without reference to the full council.

Delegating that decision to a single senior council officer is one option.

The press conference heard that central to any eventual decision were six variations on the overall agreement requested by British Land and Stanhope.

The content of those variations was not made public and could be the subject of confidentiality clauses at the cabinet meeting.

While the timetable for politics of the decision has been honed down to a month, the press conference confirmed that Easter 2014 was now the target completion date for the scheme.

Right now, the conference heard, the visit of the Queen and the arrival of the Olympic Torch were key considerations.

“We don’t want Her Majesty walking on a building site or traffic delays when the Torch comes through the city,” said council leader Councillor John Jarvis.