A BURNLEY town centre multi-storey car park will close on Monday so work can start on a new £21 million health and leisure centre.

St Peter's car park will shut before demolition work starts on the concrete stack on Wednesday.

Today council bosses moved to remind motorists about the closure.

And they warned drivers to avoid the area, which will undergo severe disruption when the work starts.

A council spokesman said: "Drivers will not be able to get on to the car park on Monday morning. The car park will be handed over to the contractors who are building the new centre."

Burnley Council will open the other half of the former Pioneer site to create extra car parking. Half the site is already used for parking and the remainder will allow for around 230 spaces to be formed, predominantly for contract and long stay parking. The demolition work will last for around a week.

During that time the section of Church Street which runs alongside St Peter's car park towards Duke Bar and Brierfield will be closed to allow a 50-tonne machine to be parked on it and used to demolish the upper floors of the stack.

The carriageway closest to the TK Maxx and Staples stores will become two-way between Yorkshire Street and Adlington Street.

The spokesman added: "Disruption and delays for drivers are unavoidable and motorists are advised to avoid the area if possible while work goes ahead."

Work on the state-of-the-art building is set to start in December and the leisure aspect of the centre will be completed by the end of next year.

Health facilities are expected to be completed by summer 2006.

The centre will replace the Thompson Centre and offer a wide range of health services, including a replacement for St Nicholas health centre.

Councillor Dennis Otter, the Council's Executive member with responsibility for engineering and highways, said: "We realise that demolishing such a large structure as St Peter's multi-storey car park is going to cause some disruption but the aim is to keep that to a minimum as much as possible. The Council has done what it can to find alternative parking spaces for drivers who use the car park although, again, it is unavoidable that some people will have further to walk.

"At the end of all this Burnley will have a marvellous new joint health and leisure centre that will help regenerate that part of the town centre and provide state-of-the-art facilities for people across the borough. It is a major investment in the area."