BURNLEY's landmark town centre hotel is up for sale at an asking price of £1million.

The Comfort Inn, the former Keirby, was bought in 1987 by London-based Friendly Hotels for £915,000. It is now being advertised for sale along with four of the company's other hotels in Scotland and England.

Resident manager Rachel Daniels, would not comment on the sale of the premises. It is understood there could be a meeting of the hotel's 35 full and part-time staff today.

The 48-bedroom en-suite hotel has five conference suites and the recently refurbished An Idle Bureau cafe bar.

It is being sold by Somerset firm Lawrence, who are advertising the businesses either as a group or individually and list them as "well suited to corporate or private acquisition."

In April, the future of the 1960s building was in doubt after councillors suggested demolishing it and looking at the site for the possible relocation of the town's bus station.

Those plans were subsequently scrapped and, in August, a £5million redevelopment of the bus station, on its existing site, was revealed.

The original plan had been for a hotel and leisure complex to be created where the former Safeway Supermarket stands and Friendly Hotels were understood to be interested in the development. The Keirby was built in 1960 by Eric Cookson, managing director of Howarth of Burnley, for the former Massey's Burnley Brewery and was named after a brewery which had stood on the site.

Bass Charrington took over the hotel in the the early 1960s and a name change followed in 1968, when it was taken over by Crest Hotels. It reverted to its Keirby name when a family of Ugandan Asians bought the hotel in 1983, but it was sold two years later to Crown Hotels.

The Friendly chain has owned the hotel since 1987 and in 1992 the company changed the hotel's name to The Friendly, then The Friendly Stop Inn, then the Comfort Friendly Inn and it has been known as simply the Comfort Inn for about two years.

Friendly Hotels is a master franchisee for Choice Hotels, based at Edgware, London.

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