Shipley's revamped cinema is fighting for survival - seven months after it was taken over.

And the bosses have sent out a "Use it or lose it" message to residents as developers wait in the wings to demolish the 88-year-old building and replace it with shops.

Bradford lawyers Mark Husband and Iqbal Singh Sekhon bought the Unit 4 cinema in August last year and had high hopes of turning into a major local attraction.

But, despite spending thousands on refurbishment, the business is still not attracting enough people.

Mr Husband said: "There are no two ways about it - either more people use it regularly or it will close down, which would be a terrible shame for Shipley, Bingley, Frizinghall, Heaton and Saltaire.

"At the moment we are probably attracting about £2,500 a week which equates to about 1,000 people.

"We need £3,500 a week just to start breaking even, which means we need to increase the number of people using the cinema by a minimum of 50 per cent.

"We have had a number of approaches from property developers who have put their plans on the table. They want to demolish the cinema and either build a convenience store or a number of shop units.

"During the time we have been open as Shipley Flicks neither Iqbal nor I have taken any money out of the cinema and if we can get into the black we don't intend to for at least two years.

"If it has to close it won't mean we are left out of pocket - we will just redevelop the site and turn it into something else. But we don't want to do that - we want it to stay open as a cinema."

Mr Husband said the small cinemas struggled to obtain films on their release dates, which would increase audiences.

"Our essential problem is that out-of-town developments containing cinemas are funded by companies who have millions to spend and can easily beat us on facilities. People are attracted by the bright lights - not thinking or caring that the effect of this will in due course be that all local entertainment facilities close and will not be there when they want them.

"We also have a problem that film distributors are a cartel - they are the only source of the films and as such determine the price to be paid and who gets the films on release dates.

They also prefer out-of-town multiplex cinemas which means that most of the time we cannot get new films on their release dates and often for many weeks afterwards.

"This obviously means people go to the out-of-town complexes to see them - and that increases the problems for small cinemas like ours."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.