A tourist attraction has scaled back multi-million pound plans for a visitor welcome centre.

Work on the centre at Twycross Zoo could start next month and be completed for opening in 2010.

The original planned centre would have cost £10 million, but the centre will now cover 21,230sq ft, instead of the original 25,000 and have other amendments.

It will still feature a 300-seat restaurant overlooking a snow leopard enclosure, accessible to non-zoo visitors passing by, and it will have a gift shop and function room.

From the outside, the environmentally-friendly centre will appear like an earth mound with a living roof of plants and be landscaped with pools and streams, dry stone walls and boulders.

Management at the zoo have declined to say why the scheme has been scaled back and how much it will now cost. The project has £3 million of funding from the East Midlands Development Agency and Leicester Shire Economic Partnership.