A FORMER Burnley chapel could soon be welcoming worshippers of a different kind if it gets the green light for conversion to a nightclub.

Developers want to turn the former Mount Pleasant Chapel, in Hammerton Street, Burnley, into a disco and have drawn up plans for the conversion.

Proposals for the overhaul of the listed building have been submitted to Burnley Council and the planners, Hook Developments 2000, based in Leeds Road, Nelson, are awaiting a decision.

And a bid for an entertainment licence for the venue from 11am-2am on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays and noon to midnight on Sundays was granted this week.

A spokesman for the developers said: "It's going to be the best nightclub in Burnley.

"We are thinking about keeping some of the original features, but we will have to discuss that with planning officers. There are a lot more churches that are standing empty these days.

"They make ideal bars because of the space inside."

The chapel, a Grade II listed building in the Canalside conservation area of the town, has been empty and up for sale for a number of years but, so far, schemes for its development have failed.

Earlier plans to demolish the old Sunday School or to convert the building into a restaurant or nightclub were scrapped.

And a previous planning application three years ago to change the church into a furniture store was also refused after councillors ruled the building was in too poor a state of repair and did not have enough parking space.

Despite the plans to provide a new first-floor and to knock down a single-storey lean-to, developers are proposing to keep the organ, pulpit and pews from the original chapel.