A landmark church is looking to planners to secure its future by approving a scheme to dismantle it, move it and rebuild it - only yards from where it has stood since 1905.

Yearly upkeep costs of several thousands of pounds have forced church officials to propose moving the Grade II listed St James's Church in Baildon.

The plan, which will go before Shipley Area Committee on Thursday, involves re-siting the white Scandin-avian-style wooden church, demolishing its separate dilapidated church hall and selling vacant land behind it to developers for housing.

In 1999, the Telegraph & Argus reported how church officials feared the church, off Otley Road, would have to close unless emergency funding could be found.

Planners will hear that the church will be rebuilt.

The only difference will be that a new church hall will be built on to it at the back housing a meeting room, toilets and a kitchen. Extra parking spaces will also be created.

The church was carried from Essex to Yorkshire on a traction engine in 1905. Churchgoers believe it was brought in sections to the town by a clergyman who was planning to retire in Baildon but died before it arrived.

St James's became a 'daughter' church of the parish church St John's. During the 1990s its members raised thousands of pounds to treat wet rot and keep the wooden structure sound.

The Ancient Monuments Society wants to see the church building saved and will accept it being dismantled and moved - and it having an extension added to it.

Planners have received 14 letters from objectors whose fears include the church not being able to withstand being rebuilt because it is in such a bad state and the loss of the hall as a community facility.

But today church warden and Baildon Parochial Church Council member Joan Edbury said objectors had nothing to fear.

"There was only one alternative to selling the land and that was for us to close the church," she said. "Our congregation cannot sustain it.

"The reason we are selling the L-shaped piece of land is that we need the funds to keep the church going.

"We just can't afford to keep renovating the outside of the church every four years.

"When it is taken down they will replace any rotten timbers with new ones that will look just the same.

"The hall will be built in the same style as the church.

"All the community uses that go on in the old one at the moment will continue. No one will lose out."

In a separate application for outline permission, which will also be heard on Thursday, developers want to build six mews-style homes round a courtyard near the site and two larger detached houses facing Otley Road.

A new access road would have to be built from Kirklands Lane.

Planners have been sent 19 letters from objectors and one in support.

Those against the development fear it would turn Kirklands Lane into even more of a rat run and that the new homes would overshadow other houses nearby.

Officers have recommended that panel members approve both applications.