THIS is what Brighton’s historic Victorian terraces will after a £24 million restoration.

The image was released after members of the city council's policy and resources committee agreed to proceed with a bid for £4 million of Government funding to kick-start a project that could create up to 170 new jobs and bring in £5 million a year.

Further details on the rebuild project for Madeira Terraces were revealed in the wake of Brighton and Hove City Council’s first stage bid.

It is hoped the first phase of the project to restore the 860 metre long structure could be completed by 2019 at the earliest but the whole project will take up to 2023 according to bid papers submitted to the Department for Local Government and Communities.

Funding will be used for the restoration, rebuilding and replacing parts of the Terraces to create new glass pods housing businesses, cafés, restaurants, art galleries or hotel apartments as well as a wider restoration and repair of the rest of the Victorian structure and improving its access.

Council officers are also considering the potential extension of the Madeira Drive Shelter Hall on the middle tier above Concorde 2.

As well as £4 million potentially coming from the Coastal Communities Revival Fund, the council is also looking to borrow a further £6 million.

The authority will apply to the Public Works Loan Board, which also contributed £36 million to the construction of the i360.

The Madeira Terraces plans came under fire earlier this month from Brighton Society chairwoman Selma Montford who questioned whether seafront businesses to be housed in the new pods would be prosperous and said the terraces should be retained as an attraction in themselves.

She called for a “more thorough, coherent and original project” that retained and developed the terraces’ “open air aspect”.

The council has already been successful in obtaining £50,000 in Government funding to help develop a Madeira Drive Regeneration Strategy – a draft of which will be unveiled in October.

Council leader Warren Morgan said the overall cost of the project could rise nearer to initial estimates of £30 million as the project progressed.

Labour councillor Gill Mitchell said minister Mark Francois had visited the Terraces during the recent Great British Coastal Conference in Brighton last month and told her he had not appreciated the scale of the project before the visit.

She added: “Fingers crossed we get the bid which will go some way to allow us to do the work to attract the rest of finance.”

The second stage of the bid would be submitted next year if the council is successful with the initial round.