In November last year it was revealed that a mobile 120-seat cinema dubbed ‘The Screen Machine’ was to come to Harborough as a temporary solution to the lack of facilities in the town.

Bruntingthorpe-based Production Imagineers said they hoped the facility would be installed on a patch of grass behind the leisure centre in time for Christmas.

But five weeks later there is still no sign of the cinema.

Alastair Campbell, who is campaigning to bring a permanent cinema to the town, said he had attempted to contact Production Imagineers director Tom Moores on several occasions in the last few weeks to get a progress update with no success.

He added: “Everyone keeps asking me what’s happening with the mobile cinema but I have to say I don’t know. It’s frustrating.”

The Mail tried to contact Mr Moores this week but was unable to reach him on either his mobile or by email.

The mobile unit, an articulated lorry with a trailer which expands into an air-conditioned widescreen cinema with surround sound, was developed by Scottish arts group Highlands and Islands Arts at a cost of £650,000 in 1998.

Originally designed to give residents in remote Highlands areas access to a cinema, Production Imagineers had said it wanted to bring the unit down from Inverness before giving it a refit in a £150,000 project.

Campaigners had hoped it would act as a temporary ‘fix’ to Harborough’s cinema problem while showing the viability of such a facility to potential operators in the meantime.