The first in the long series is the £500,000 resurfacing of Northbrook Street, seven years after it was last revamped. Officials want the work to begin in January, and have asked for taxpayers’ money to fund the programme, unless cash can be extracted from Shearer Properties – developers of the Park Way shopping mall.

The work must be finished by June, when the Market Place will be dug up and resurfaced. Just weeks after that, officials hope to have a mandate to dig up the Wharf, a year ahead of a plan to pedestrianise Park Way in 2008.

Those behind the 25-year Vision of Newbury want Northbrook Street to benefit from the £1.2m makeover of Bartholomew Street, and the scheme will take into account the two new sidestreets to be knocked through into Park Way.