For sale: a Prince Charles-designated ‘carbuncle’ in the centre of Bingley, estimated market value £4 million.

The multi-tiered Bradford & Bingley former HQ has lasted as a functioning building just 35 years. The last 400 of the mortgage company’s staff were moved out to Crossflatts last year.

Bingley Conservative councillor John Pennington, campaigning to have part of the Aire Valley road renamed Sir Fred Hoyle Way, is a member of Bradford Council’s planning committee. He is necessarily constrained in giving an opinion about what should be there, lest that be interpreted as showing preference.

For example, the Tesco planning application for the old Bingley auction mart site is in the process of being considered at City Hall.

Councillor Pennington said: “I am only concerned about what the town needs, and what the traders need is activity in something on that site.

“Whatever is done with that building or on that site needs to be complementary to Bingley. We have a successful market three days a week, we have sensible parking and we are in a good catchment area. In December, we lost 400 people from the Bradford & Bingley to Crossflatts, so the building is empty.”

Waiting for either the wrecking ball or builder’s scaffolding... Over the past few years Bradford has seen a mixture of both demolition and conversion: Forster Square and Eastbrook Hall are the best known examples of each.

Bingley-based artist Jane Fielder, whose Bingley Gallery in Park Road is just around the corner from the B&B, claims to be one of the few people who loves the building, a regular feature of her popular ‘Janescapes’ of the town and its surroundings.

She said: “I have grown to love it. I had dreams, a bit crazy, of a skate park, classes for young folk, a cafe and upstairs I can imagine art spaces, maybe studios, galleries, like The Art House at Wakefield.

“That place has these areas where people can work, there are studios for disabled people, people from abroad can come a stay: it’s a hub of culture really. But I suppose these are just pie-in-the-sky ideas.”

Perhaps, but no more unlikely than a £200m superdome with retractable roof at Odsal. It’s the job of artists to imagine beyond facts and circumstances. The purpose of politicians is to deal with the consequences of what Harold Macmillan called ‘events, dear boy’.

Shipley’s Conservative MP Philip Davies is rarely short of an opinion about matters affecting his constituency.

He said: “Some people might think a supermarket there would be better than where Tesco is proposing to build one on the edge of town.

“Personally, I think the building is one of the most ugly you can see. What I want is the best for Bingley in terms of profitability and regeneration.

“If there’s something that could be done with that site that’s best for Bingley, I would be in favour of that.

“It’s a crucial site. We can’t afford to have a building that looks futuristic that’s going to wrack and ruin.”

A somewhat similar justification has been made elsewhere for the demolition of the Odeon in Bradford. The city went down the modernising route in the 1960s and early 1970s – “improvements”, as they became known, ironically.

A good many of those landmark buildings either no longer exist or are awaiting demolition: the Interchange with the enormous glass roof; Central House in Forster Square; the N&P building in the Tyrls and, just across the road, the former police HQ.

One of the few survivors of that era is the Charles Street office block, Arndale House, said to have been designed by the disgraced Pontefract architect, the late John Poulson.

Most people would accept that towns and cities are not museums of the past; they must adapt and change if they are to survive as places where people live and work.

However, does Bingley need a third supermarket in addition to the Co-op and the one Tesco is proposing for the site near the grammar school? That is the question.

Jane Fielder is not sure. She said: “In some ways a big supermarket would be good, but it would be the end of the Co-op, which is a great place to shop and is ethical.

“I don’t know about a big supermarket on the Bradford & Bingley site. I really don’t like them taking over the world.”