A FORMER supermarket is up for auction - with councillors hoping it could finally become a new health centre.

The ex-Kwik Save building located on Craddock Road, Colne, is up for sale with Pugh & Company for a starting price of £380,000.

Councillors have called for East Lancashire PCT to buy the site so that it can be used for its planned £12m health centre.

The supermarket, which closed in March 2006, was believed to be the preferred location of the new facility, which was to replaced the existing Colne Health Centre in Market Street, but the plans had not come to fruition.

Coun Tony Greaves said: “It is no secret that councillors in Colne have called on the East Lancashire NHS Primary Care Trust to buy the former Kwik Save site in order to build the new much larger Health Centre which they have promised for Colne.

“We still believe that this is the best site. Pendle Council is urging the PCT to make a serious attempt to buy this site at the land auction on December 4.”

A spokesman for East Lancashire PCT said that they were still looking for a site for the new health centre but could not comment on individual locations.

Coun Sharon Davies said she was worried who would buy the supermarket.

She said: “We are concerned that by putting it in an auction they could be selling it to another owner who does nothing with it for years – or has ideas which would not be suitable for this town centre location.

“Colne has suffered too much from people who buy a property on an impulse and who then fail to bring it back into use – Shackleton Hall is a good example of this kind of thing.”

The property, which is located within Colne town centre and adjacent to the police station, is in between the main retail vacinity of the town and a large residential area.

James Ashworth, of Pugh & Company, said: “Our website page for this particular property has already at this early stage received almost a 1000 hits.

“Likely purchasers could include owner occupiers for retail use and speculative investors looking to try and let the premises.”

The closure of Kwik Save saw 16 job losses in Colne.