AN historic sports clubhouse could be knocked down to make way for flats.
Battyeford Sporting Club has asked Kirklees Council for permission to demolish its old changing rooms and build a block of three flats.
The junior sporting club, which has many teams in the Huddersfield-based RCD Junior League, opened its new clubhouse in 2008.
Now the club wants to knock down the single-storey changing rooms that was their base for years and build three one-bedroom flats.
The new building would sit in the same 165sq m footprint as the old clubhouse and would be made from natural materials to match surrounding houses.
Kirklees Council officers will decide on the plan.
Battyeford Sporting Club moved from its old site off Stocks Bank Road two years ago to a new clubhouse next to football pitches on Huddersfield Road.
The club has more than 350 players in 26 teams, ranging from seven-year-olds upwards.
The move to the new clubhouse was hit by years of delays. The club first began drawing up plans in 1996. By 2004 Battyeford had raised £413,000 for the project, including a grant of £313,000 from the Football Foundation.
But the new clubhouse plan was held up when the club had to negotiate a 25-year lease with Kirklees for use of the council-owned land at West Mills Playing Fields off Huddersfield Road.
In 2004 Kirklees presented the club with a draft contract for use of the land. Battyeford would have had to give the council all the money it had raised as 25 years’ worth of upfront rent.
The matter was resolved and building work on the new clubhouse began in May, 2007, with the opening taking place halfway through the 2008/09 season.
