The Labour Group on Southampton City Council together with local Labour MPs continue to oppose the sale of art from the City Art Gallery to help fund the proposed Heritage Centre.

Labour Cllr Sarah Bogle said: “Councillors are custodians of this nationally important collection, and do not have the right to use it for short term funding gaps.

“We are also concerned that the Tate Gallery is unlikely to support the art sale and we need to find an alternative way forward.”

Cllr Derek Burke, the party’s leisure and culture spokesperson, said: “We strongly support the arts quarter in Northern Above Bar and the regeneration of this area of the city.

“These ideas were first mooted by Labour nearly 10 years ago, and have been supported by all three political parties on the council.

“We want Southampton to be proud of its arts and culture, not try and play one off against the other. The art is our heritage as much as the Titanic or our medieval walls.”

Labour proposes that the funding shortfall for the Heritage Centre should be found from prudential borrowing.

Southampton is currently £75m below the prudential borrowing limit set by the Government, and there has been recent cross-party agreement on using small increases in the city’s prudential borrowing to fund capital projects, including the development of Guildhall Square and the purchase of Dock Gate 20.

A further small closing of the gap between the council’s current prudential borrowing and the Government limit would be infinitely preferable to the damage the art sale could bring to the Gallery and Southampton’s cultural reputation.

Labour Councillors will bring a motion to that effect to the next meeting of the Council in November to make this proposal.

Labour MP for Southampton Test, Alan Whitehead, said: “The new heritage centre is an exciting prospect but it is not true that the only way to fund it is by selling off the contents of the art gallery.

“The prudential borrowing route is there for precisely this kind of investment and ought to be used.

“Southampton's reputation in the arts world is slowly suffering - we need a new route urgently and this is it.”