COUNCILLORS have approved plans to knock down the Edinburgh House YMCA in Clarence Street, Shear Brow.

Concerned neighbours are now demanding to know what will be built on the site, once earmarked for the Tauheedul Trust’s Islamic boys’ school for 700 pupils.

In June, Blackburn with Darwen borough planning committee refused permission to demolish it for the construction of the four-storey secondary school.

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The trust has moved the academy temporarily to the former Blakewater College in Shadsworth and says it has abandoned the scheme for the site.However, it has refused to confirm it is now looking at land on Phillips Road, Whitebirk for the new school.

The committee has approved demolition of the vacant building.

Chairman Dave Smith said: “This building is dangerous. It is a death trap.”

Neighbours in Clarence Street and the nearby 280-year-old Blackburn Subscription Bowling Club objected to knocking down the derelict building until proper proposals for the cleared site’s future were in place.

Neighbour Ibrahim Shafi told the committee in a letter: “I hope that Tauheedul do not have the intention that the felling of the building would be one of the first stages for them to take to get the approval of building the school on Clarence Street. I hope and pray the planning is only to demolish the building.”

Proposals to build the country’s first Muslim free school were put forward in 2011 but provoked bitter opposition from nearby residents.

Tauheedul Trust chief executive Hasid Patel said: “We accepted the local authority’s original decision which refused our planning application to build a school.

“We are now undertaking a feasibility study to explore the options available to us.”

Clarence Street resident Ansar Ali said: “Until we know where else the Tauheedul boys’ school will be built and what is being put on the YMCA site our concerns will remain.”