SOUTH Lakeland's leading rugby club is exploring plans to sell up and relocate from its grounds, paving the way for a possible hotel and bowling alley development, writes tourism reporter Nadia Jefferson-Brown.

Negotiations are under way after developers approached Kendal Rugby Club - ranked among the country's top 30 clubs - about buying and redeveloping its site at Mint Bridge.

South Lakeland District Council officers, who have held talks with the parties about appropriate schemes, have stressed leisure facilities should be a prominent feature of any plans.

Club chairman Ian Hutton said the club's board of trustees would have to agree any proposal, which he thought involved 'one principal developer in combination with other people'.

Asked about rumours that the proposal could include a hotel/motel with a leisure facility, such as a bowling alley, he said: "In general terms that's probably true.

That was the way the district council preferred the site to be developed from the preliminary discussions.

It is looking for an attractive development there that enhances the town."

Mr Hutton explained the club's existing facilities were ' becoming inadequate'.

The club, which has three senior sides and several junior teams, owns two pitches with only natural drainage and borrows a school pitch.

"We need to update the set-up.

We need more space.

We are simply limited as to what we can do.

But the club won't move unless the whole deal is right."

He stressed 'nothing is signed and sealed'.

Several sites for the club had been considered, but the issue was still 'being debated'.

And Mr Hutton said there was 'an attachment' to the current ground, which has been 'the home of Kendal rugby' since 1928.

SLDC's economy and development manager Richard Greenwood said the proposal involved 'relocation of the club and redevelopment of the site for mixed uses'.

"We have heard there may be some accommodation involved," he added.

"If the development comprises a bowling alley then that part of it is something we would be encouraging our members to support."

Previous attempts have been made to buy the land, but talks came to nothing.

Mr Greenwood said there had to be 'a high leisure and recreation content' for an application to be accepted.

"We have generally discouraged retail development simply because we are being encouraged, and our own policy is, to concentrate investment in town centres," he said.