A £2 MILLION scheme to give business start-ups and fledgling companies a new purpose-built, eco-friendly business centre in Clifton Moor has been given the green light.

City councillors have approved the plan, which will see the closure of the Fishergate Centre and the demolition of Parkside Commercial Centre, both York city centre venues catering for new and growing enterprises.

Both will be redeveloped, and their occupants invited to move into the new council centre when it is built by developers The Helmsley Group in two years' time.

The site will be in Amy Johnson Way, Clifton Moor, which City of York Council bought for £196,000 using a venture fund loan two years ago. It will have room for 60 businesses - triple the size of the Fishergate Centre. None of the occupants will be allowed to stay for more than four years.

Lettings will be on a licensed basis, for "easy in, easy out" terms, and preference will be given to start-up businesses or those trading from home and which have not had business premises before.

The new centre will feature ground source heating, solar panels to generate hot water, wind turbines for energy plus water recycling systems.

The York, Selby and Malton Business Advice Centres (BAC) Ltd, the non-profit making organisation, will transfer its management of the Fishergate Centre to Clifton Moor, where it will base itself.

Ian McAndrew, associate director at the Pocklington-based The Helmsley Group, said: "The building is designed to help reduce carbon emissions by the use oif renewable energy technology and energy-efficient equipment, and will be a first for York. Occupiers will benefit from reduced annual running costs compared with a conventional building of this size and nature. This is fantastic news for York entrepreneurs."

Updated: 09:59 Friday, March 24, 2006