ONCE it was lost, now it has been found.

City of York Council chiefs were in a sweat after a petition containing the names of more than 1,000 objectors to moves to house the new Arc Light centre at Union Terrace car park went missing.

Members of the Claremont Terrace, Union Terrace and Portland Street Residents' Association (CUPRA) handed in the document on April 18 as one of the mainstays of their campaign against plans to house the homeless charity on the area's car park.

But CUPRA members were concerned when a report to City of York Council's ruling executive came out - and there was no mention of the 1,079 name petition, the largest from any of the four short listed Arc Light sites.

In an email to CUPRA president Rob Gray, Bill Hodson, the council's director of housing and adult social services, admitted: "There is no record of the 1,000-plus signatures to that petition being part of the papers handed in and consequently the council does not have a set of those signatures".

But the authority today confirmed the document had been discovered and would be handed to the executive for consideration when councillors meet to take a decision tomorrow.

Mr Gray said the petition "loss" represented wider concerns that CUPRA had about the report which went to the executive for next week's meeting.

Union Terrace, Marygate and Nunnery Lane car parks, along with the former Reynard's garage, in Piccadilly, are the sites which have been short listed as a possible location for Arc Light's new state-of-the-art homeless centre.

One of them will be chosen as a preferred site next Tuesday, with a further round of consultation and a planning application then being considered at a later date.

A council spokeswoman said the petition had been presented to the authority in an envelope to Steve Galloway, and had gone to the leader, rather than to the authority officer for which it was intended.

Mr Gray said: "CUPRA has no confidence in the integrity of the report submitted to the executive due to the catalogue of omissions, misrepresentations and lost petitions.

"A cynical person may believe that the council deliberately 'lost' the petition, as it demonstrates the huge opposition to Arc Light being located on the Union Terrace car park - more than all the other sites combined. However, we are inclined to believe it was down to sheer incompetence."

Updated: 09:03 Monday, May 01, 2006