A CONTROVERSIAL plan to convert a disused warehouse into a community centre looks set to fail.

The VMI building in Newton Street, Audley Range, Blackburn, is at the centre of a long running dispute between local residents and the Kokni Muslim Association.

The application will be discussed at the planning committee tomorrow but officials are recommending the applications is thrown out.

The VMI building stands next to a busy mosque and the plan is to use it as a community centre which would hold up to 160 people.

Similar applications were made in 1997, 1998 and last year but were withdrawn before they were discussed by the planing committee.

Local residents say the building has been used in the past as a community centre without planning permission and Blackburn with Darwen Council has threatened to take out enforcement action.

Problems centre around the building being used include lack of parking, severe disruption of a mainly residential area and large amounts of litter.

Local councillors are supporting the objectors and a petition has been delivered to the town hall.

The governing body of St Thomas Primary School has also written to the council urging that the planning application is turned down.

One resident who wrote in object to the plan said: "I have objected to the application every time it has been brought to the planning department. "The local community has had a series of meetings with the trustees and are dismayed that no attempt has been made in this application to compromise with us.

"May I suggest that this is not a race discrimination matter as has been suggested by Mr Madigan but a simple matter of people's rights to enter and leave their properties and their rights to be able to have the emergency services have access if needed." Another letter reads: "I wish to place on record my objections to the planning application, at the same time I wish to register my utter disgust that anyone could find anything in this situation racist.

"Basically at the end of it all I feel that no one should have to put up with all the litter and the noise, the indiscriminate blocking of people's right of way and the distress this can cause."

The Ethnic Minority Development Association is supporting the application and is claiming the council could be breaching the Race Relations Act by refusing planning permission.

EMDA spokesman Mike Madigan said he would totally rebut any suggestion that he was labelling the objectors racist.

"What we are saying is that the mosque has been there much longer than the houses and the council could possibly be in breach of the Race Relations Act if they refuse this application," he said.