Shipley residents have collected a petition in a desperate attempt to save the town's historic funfair.

More than 2,200 people signed the document calling on planning chiefs to reject an application by the co-owner of the Shipley Glen fair to build housing on the site.

Landlord Paul Teale described the application as a "contingency plan" while the business struggles to remain profitable.

But residents, who remember the fair from its heyday in the 1950s, claim it would be a disaster for the area if it closed.

Petition organiser Paul Roberts yesterday handed the petition to Councillor Anne Hawkesworth, executive member for the environment at Bradford Council.

The move came just days after another of the area's major attractions, the Victorian Shipley Glen Tramway was saved at the 11th hour when Bradford Council stepped in with a £20,000 rescue package.

But Mr Roberts, 44, of Prod Lane, warned that without the fair the tram would be doomed to failure.

"This fair is part of the district's cultural heritage.

"It has given pleasure to generations of people. When it goes everything else will collapse around it.

"An enormous amount of effort has gone into securing the future of the tram but the fair also must stay."

Supporter Di Millen, 47, a health worker, said: "I can't believe that within a year of making a bid to become the City of Culture bid a Council planning committee could allow an application like this to go through.

"People from all over Bradford come back to visit the fair. It would be a disaster for this area if it closed."

Councillor Anne Hawkesworth said she was happy to accept the petition and to present it to the Shipley planning office.

"This fair has got great emotional ties for many middle-aged people.

"It is somewhere that many people can recall going to at weekends and is a very important part of our social history and culture."

The fair, which opened in 1879, is home to Britain's oldest cable car ride, and for a short time in the 1950s housed a zoo complete with bears and a lion.

Paul Teale, managing director of Teale Brothers Limited, took over the fair when his father died.

His company now leases the site to independent operators.

Mr Teale said it would be a great shame if the fair closed but added that he could not escape "cold hard economics".

"I have been here 36-years and we are trying to keep going. But each year that goes by the visitors get fewer and fewer," he said.

"It has either got to be expanded or closed and that takes people to invest money.

"Unfortunately people are not exactly queuing up to do that."