Legal action is being planned over the sale of a public toilet block in West Cumbria.

Allerdale council, which owns the toilets, invited bids for the facility at Braithwaite, near Keswick.

The public toilet was registered as a community asset last year and two bids were submitted.

One was for a cafe and the other was for the toilet block to be turned into a hub to store historic records by the village’s community archive group.

The group which wanted to turn it into a local archive centre is now taking the authority to court after it instead favoured a bid to turn it into a cafe.

The Braithwaite Community Archive Community Interest Company said it was not happy about the way the decision was made.

It is now calling for the authority to stop the sale and agree to an independent public inquiry, otherwise it will take legal action to obtain an injunction and judicial review.

David Best, chairman of the community interest company, said: “We have had very serious concerns about the whole divestment process from beginning to end.”

An Allerdale spokeswoman said correct procedures had been followed and that they have offered to meet with the community group.

The spokeswoman added: “We were keen to look at new ways to secure the long-term future of the toilets in Braithwaite.

“We were clear with both parties that they had to maintain a public toilet facility for visitors and residents of Braithwaite.

“The community archive scored highly on the community value criteria. However, the panel had greater confidence in the long-term financial sustainability of the bid for the café and their ability to continue to provide a public toilet facility which would be open at similar times to now.”