A FORMER pub could be turned into a restaurant with offices above.

Plans for a change of use of The Church Hotel in Crook Street in Bolton town centre have been lodged with Bolton Council by developer Mubarak Sardar, who bought the property in 2010.

It is just the latest proposed scheme in the eventful planning history of the venue that was forced to close in mid-2008 due to falling trade.

The following April the body of rough sleeper Alan Bennett was found in the cellar of the pub following a blaze.

Manchester-born Mr Bennett, aged 47, was believed to have been dead for at least a month before he was discovered.

Mr Sardar's latest plans would see the former pub converted into a restaurant on the ground floor and the bed and breakfast accommodation on the first and second floors becoming offices.

A design and access statement said: "Proposals for a change of use to the existing building will bring first class facilities and a modernise look to existing building which will unquestionably support a growing demand to the local community.

"The proposal will enhance the character and appearance of the streetscape in particular and the local area in general.

"By adding investment it will improve the locality by adding diversity and supporting the local economy.

"It is located in a sustainable location and will enhance the vitality and viability of this locality by providing appropriate reuse of this unoccupied building."

According to the Lost Pubs of Bolton website The Church Hotel was built in the 1830s, soon after the consecration of the nearby Holy Trinity Church.

PICTURE GALLERY: Do you remember these lost pubs of Bolton?

It became a Tong’s pub late in the nineteenth century before being one of 21 pubs taken over by Walkers of Warrington when they bought out Tong’s in 1923. It became a Tetley pub in 1960.

During the 1970s The Church gained a reputation for its live entertainment.

By the early 1980s is became a meeting point for Bolton’s ‘New Romantics’ and later that same decade it became a gay pub.

Plans submitted by a previous owner to demolish the pub and build a seven-storey office block in its place were rejected by the council in 2007.

The following year an outline scheme to raze the building to make way for an eight-storey block of offices was similarly refused.

In 2010 plans to change use of the property into nine self-contained flats were turned down — a decision upheld on appeal by a planning inspector the year after.