Plans to restore Worthing seafront's historic Dome Cinema may be delayed by up to two years.

The £2.5 million refurbishment programme was due to be finished by December 31 2003, but it is now proposed to shift the completion date to December 31 2005.

The project is being carried out by the Worthing Dome Regeneration Trust, which bought the run-down listed building from Worthing Borough Council for a nominal £10 in 1999.

The building had been neglected for 30 years and needed major restoration work beyond what the council said it could afford.

The trust undertook to complete the refurbishment by the end of 2003, including the creation of a new Tourist Information Centre within the building which would be leased to the council.

When complete, the Dome building was to open as an entertainment complex including a museum, cinema, restaurant, cafe, lecture hall, meeting room and bar.

Now the trust has asked the council to extend the deadline by two years to allow it more time to arrange funding for the work.

Chairman Belle Stennett said: "These things always seem to take longer than we envisaged. We are only a small band of volunteers and we have been so busy running the cinema, everything else is taking longer than we thought it would.

"I think when we started we were a little over-ambitious to think we would be able to finish the work in such a short time."

The trust has been promised £1.75 million of lottery money to carry out the restoration but it has to prepare detailed plans to show the administrators of the Heritage Lottery Fund before the cash will be released.

Already, £42,000 of this money has been released to cover the cost of preparing the reports.

Mrs Stennett said: "It is a very lengthy and detailed process and we have had to get a lot of reports drawn up.

"It has taken us a year just to prepare the conservation plan, which is important because it will be a template for the whole project."

The lottery grant is also conditional on the trust raising £500,000 towards the project itself.

The trust has already reopened the cinema, which had been closed for eight months before it took over.

The front of the building is shortly to receive a makeover and the Dome has recently become the first cinema in Britain to be granted a licence to perform civil marriages.

The proposal to delay the completion date by two years is expected to be agreed by Worthing executive councillor Steven Waight on September 12.