The future of the £100million Marine Plaza development appears to be hanging in the balance after Southend Council consulted lawyers over the plan, which is now in danger of being scrapped.

The Inner London Group, which is behind the scheme to transform the prominent site opposite the Kursaal, has applied for permission to start construction following demolition of buildings on the plot but may be forced to start from scratch with a new application.

The scheme has taken so long to get off the ground the council believes planning permission has lapsed and it has confirmed lawyers are being consulted. Work which began in August has ground to halt.

The group applied for a lawful development certificate after Southend Council questioned whether sufficient demolition work had taken place before the expiry of planning permission in July, three years after it was granted.

The developer had carried out some demolition but didn’t complete it until August with the bulldozing of the Foresters Arms pub to make way for a hotel, 282 flats along with shops and restaurants.

Southend Council leader Ian Gilbert has now not ruled out changes to the scheme if developers are forced to submit new plans.

He said: “The planning department is obliged to establish whether the development was started within the time scale. I can’t comment on a legal point of view but, generally speaking, developers seeking to delay implementation then expand planning permission simply by starting a development that is then not brought forward has been a real problem in the past.

“The buildings in Victoria Avenue were derelict for an extremely long time. There is a potential to review what we want there.

“I am on record as saying I wouldn’t have voted for this scheme at the time.”

Kursaal ward councillor Matt Dent said: “It is eminently possible there could be something different on that site. I don’t want to see it remain derelict but I’m not a huge fan of the plans approved in 2015 .

“In terms of the design and what the town needs, if they went through that process again I hope the council will look for something more suited to what we need in 2020 and for the future.

The Inner London Group last month said they were confident the legal wrangle could be resolved. The company was not available for comment yesterday.