AN appeal has been submitted after plans to turn a derelict building into a fish and chip restaurant were rejected by Councillors.

The decision by Bradford Council’s Keighley area planning panel to refuse the application earlier this year was branded “idiotic” and “nonsensical” by a local historian.

If the appeal is successful, it will see the Station Master’s House on the junction of Wellington Street and Park Road in Bingley turned into a chippy after standing empty since the 1990s.

Planning officers had recommended the plans, submitted jointly by Bingley Property Holdings and Matt and Jo Hogg, who own the Old Brown Cow public house in Bingley, be approved, but Councillors went against against the recommendations.

Bingley Town Council had objected to the plan when it was first submitted, citing a lack of adequate parking, concerns about waste management and increased littering as reasons it should be refused.

The Town Council also said there are lots of fast food restaurants in the town already.

But despite that set back in February, the applicants have decided to appeal the decision.

If the application had been approved earlier this year, the restaurant was originally likely to have opened later this month, and the appeal was submitted on April 26.

The original plans for the old building included an extension to the side and rear, new windows and a new door, a new railing around the building’s boundaries and new bin stores.

It would have seen the building turned into a 28-seater restaurant, creating 15 jobs, and an application for an alcohol licence has also been submitted.

Jo Hogg said the planning panel had “not fully understood” the application previously.

She said: “It will be something Bingley has not already got, but something you see in the likes of Harrogate or Ilkley.

“It will be a fish and seafood restaurant and bar. It does have a takeaway element, but that is not the main part of it.

“I don’t think the panel fully understood where we were coming from, they thought the main entrance was on the main road, but we have permission from Network Rail to use the loading bay on the train station side so there will never be a lorry in the main road and we will be working in off-peak times too.

“We have appealed because we didn’t agree with the decision to refuse or the ground on which it was refused, and we wanted to be able to put a more detailed application in of what we intended to do and make the business plan more clear to someone independent of Bradford Council.

“We aren’t confident it will be approved, just hopeful.”

Planning applications for the building to turn it into a hot food takeaway, flats, and to demolish the building were all rejected ten years ago by the Council.

An application to open a chain of pizza takeaway Dominos which received similar complaints from Bingley Town Council was given approval by Bradford Council last year.