The proposals for the Eric Gray Centre, with architectural drawings by Richard Gibson Architects, were lodged last month and the detailed designs are due to be finalised by April.

The council plans to borrow the money to build the new resource centre, which will be built on the Seafield hockey pitch, and must find £357,000 a year over 25 years to pay off the loan.

The authority is currently looking for “all possible avenues of external funding” to help, and is also planning to save money by getting rid of some posts that are not being filled at the moment.

It is hoped that if the plans are approved, tenders for the construction work will go out in October, allowing the building to be completed in August 2017.

Capital programme manager Robert Sinclair has warned that the “unusual market conditions” in Shetland at the moment, with so much construction taking place, make it difficult to be certain the centre can be built within the current budget.

Meanwhile an underspend in the community care department has covered this year’s £305,000 administrative costs for the project.

Community health and social care director Simon Bokor Ingram said that the demand for places in the centre would increase in the future with the growing number of people needing support.

“We have more people coming through from children’s services and people will live for longer with conditions whereas they wouldn’t have in the past so the overall number of clients we are dealing with is increasing,” he said.