An extra £10m has been pledged by the government towards the construction of the city’s V&A Museum after it emerged the cost had almost doubled to £80m.

Inverclyde Council leader Stephen McCabe says this could indicate that the government would also be willing to help rescue the Beacon.

The award-winning arts centre needs £2m to pay an outstanding bill from builders or Greenock Arts Guild — which owns it — will plunge into administration with the loss of 60 full and part-time jobs.

Scottish Government arts agency Creative Scotland and urban regeneration company Riverside Inverclyde have said they can’t contribute.

The Beacon have asked the council for the money and they in turn have requested that the Scottish Government comes up with £600,000 of it. Councillor McCabe says he has raised the issue with Scottish Government culture secretary Fiona Hyslop.

He stated she is ‘very sympathetic and doesn’t want to see the Beacon going into administration’.

Mr McCabe added: “I am still waiting on a formal response from the culture secretary but if the government can find another £10m for the V&A, I would expect them to be able to come up with at least £600,000 for the Beacon.” Councillors will get a briefing tomorrow from the Beacon on their business plan and a special meeting of the full council will be held next Thursday to decide if it can afford to take money away from other projects to save the centre, which is taking legal action against its advisers.

The nine-strong Labour minority administration is keen to keep the Beacon open, but it is unclear if the 11 opposition councillors will get together to vote down any more cash.

Councillor Chris McEleny, leader of the six SNP councillors, today insisted that any money recouped by the Beacon through legal action should be used to repay cash handed over by the council.

He said: “The SNP group have set out clear criteria that must be met for the council to consider giving the Beacon any support, including improved governance at board level, better financial accountability, the ability to prove to the council that a robust business plan is in place that makes the organisation sustainable and better involvement with community organisations.

“If Labour councillors, and indeed the rest of the members of the council ideally, can agree that this is a common sense approach, I would be hopeful that we can work together on this issue.” Asked to respond to claims that Ms Hyslop was putting pressure on him to support the Beacon, he said: “Naturally, the Scottish Government are keeping an active interest in the situation.

“However, the SNP group in Inverclyde will make a decision on the matter based on what we believe will be best for Inverclyde. I have invited the council leader to meet with me in order to get the best solution for Inverclyde.” Meanwhile, an extraordinary general meeting of the Arts Guild has decided to change its constitution to a single-tier structure.

This will remove the possibility of board decisions being overturned by guild members who are not on the board.

Board chairman Allan Robertson said: “We believe this represents positive change that will allow us to move forward.

“Our next step is to meet with Inverclyde Council and try to secure funding for the final building costs of the Beacon.” The change of structure means that only the chairman and company secretary can remain on the existing board. All of the other board members will be invited to apply to join it again, and it is expected they will all resume their positions.

Margaret Day is the company secretary and Gordon Armour is finance director while the other directors are Andrew Gerrard, David Gorry, Hugh Harris, Bill Knox, Stewart McMillan, Stuart McKinnon, Jane Spiers, Raymond Jack, John Macleod and Susan Robinson.