The Bournemouth Daily Echo is spearheading a campaign to save one of the town’s most famous entertainment venues.

The paper has been inundated with letters from readers opposed to the local council’s plans – but councillors argue that the town cannot support the venue as well as the Bournemouth International Centre and an improved Pavilion Theatre.

Editor Neal Butterworth said: “We recognised straight away there is a groundswell of opinion about it.

“We ran two pages of letters on this today (July 14) simply because we’d had so many. We ran two pages on Saturday as well, with 95 per cent of them supporting the Winter Gardens.”

The issue was being debated by the council this week and a decision is due in July.

The Bournemouth International Centre is the town’s conference centre, hosting the Labour Party last year and the Lib Dems this time around. It has also proved popular for rock concerts. The Pavilion Theatre seats around 1,800 and hosts a mixture of theatre and comedy acts, while the Winter Gardens itself has the best acoustics in town and seats around 1,800.

Mr Butterworth said: “It is much-loved by the populous but the argument which can be put forward is that with three venues there are not enough people to make them all pay.

“The place hasn’t been promoted very well and, although it will take money to transform it, there’s money to be made there.”

“The problem is that the venue is in a catch-22 position, which means that if the venue isn’t being picked by the promoters the artists won’t come, and if artists aren’t coming it’s not seen as a potential venue.

“Someone needs to take a risk on it.”

The Winter Gardens’ demise began in 1979, when Bournemouth orchestras moved their base to Poole. When the BIC opened in 1984, many pop concerts and summer shows went there instead. And by 1990 the place was under threat of the bulldozer when a structural survey revealed substantial investment was required. But public outcry led to the formation of a Trust and the first of several attempts to save it.

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