The chair of the Spalding and District Civic Society has called on the district council to buy the former Bull and Monkie site and Barclays Bank.
Both are subject to planning applications the group are looking to oppose.
Updated plans to build a care home on the long derelict former Church Gate pub is opposed by the society on the grounds it would block out St Mary and St Nicolas Church.
Separately, gambling firm BoyleSport has applied to turn the old Hall Place bank into a betting shop.
John Bland, chair of the Spalding and District Civic Society, says South Holland District Council should sell its Priory Road offices for a care home as its likely to become obsolete due to proposed local government reform.
He then says the new Spalding Town Council that would need to be set up could take over the Bull and Monkie site and any staff based locally in the new authority be based at Hall Place alongside the other services that would need to be moved from Priory Road including Citizen’s Advice and Job Centre Plus.
The objection to the Bull and Monkie proposal states these ideas would bring ‘council services into the heart of the town’.
“When the original application came before planning committee, concern was expressed that this application represented the only sustainable option for the site. However, this is not the case,” it states. “Given the respective values of each site, if adopted, there is the potential for a significant profit to be made that could benefit the town of Spalding in future.”
The proposal does not say how the district council would fund the compulsory purchases, nor any renovation works to the Bull and Monkie or former bank.
“Whilst we do not know how much space the new unitary authority that will replace the district council will need in Spalding but it is very likely that the current council offices will become redundant,” Mr Bland said. “The scale of that building does lend itself to having a potential future use as a care home.
“We feel that our proposal should be explored further to determine whether it is viable.”
The district council has looked at purchasing the property before. In 2022 its then executive manager for governance, Mark Stinson, said: “It’s not a straightforward process of simply saying we’re fed up of seeing this run down property so we’ll place a compulsory purchase order on it.
“There’s quite a tortuous process and it’s not entirely in our own hands.”
