The Rose Theatre will be taken to the brink of financial ruin before receiving a penny more of taxpayers' money.

Tory councillors sitting on last night's scrutiny committee forced the decision back to an extraordinary meeting of the full council to be held the night before Christmas Eve.

Stunned theatre bosses told the council that any delay which stopped them receiving the £600,000 promised by the Lib Dem administration before the end of the year would would kill the theatre dead.

But to the dismay of theatre supporters and Lib Dem councillors, the Conservatives insisted that every one of the 48 elected members should have the right to have a say on the money on behalf of voters in an extraordinary full council.

They also criticised the decision to hand over more money to the Rose, said they had no faith in the business plan and called for the board to fall on their swords.

The Mayor of Kingston, Councillor David Berry, will be asked today to convene an extraordinary meeting of the full council on December 23.

If he refuses, five Tory councillors will use their consitutional rights to force a meeting of the full council. The meeting will have no legal power in the decision but will issue a recommendation back to a hastily arranged executive meeting, led by Councillor Derek Osbourne, which will reconsider the recommendation before making the final decision.

Rose Theatre chairman Anthony Simonds-Gooding said: "We are having to take legal advice daily about insolvency. When we had out last board meeting on December 10 the legal basis was if we received £900,000 by the end of the year we could continue."

Without that money, the theatre would have to close and hand out redundancies, he said.

At the meeting it was revealed the theatre had asked for "significantly more" from both the council and the university but had been turned down for a lower amount.

For more on the Rose Theatre see http://www.surreycomet.co.uk/rosetheatre/