York City supporters fighting redevelopment plans for Bootham Crescent have been buoyed after council chiefs threw out a plan to strip a community of its local hall.

Campaigners are now looking to see if Bootham Crescent can be identified as a community venue - which would protect its status under council planning law. On Tuesday night, councillors overturned officers' recommendations to turn St Clement's church hall, in Cygnet Street, into housing.

They rejected the plans because the applicants had failed to show that the building had not been well used by the community. Council leader Dave Merrett warned that if the application had been passed it would have "put every community facility in the city at risk".

Coun Merrett said: "All you would have to do is have an unscrupulous landlord, who shuts it down, turfs out the existing users and says there are various other facilities".

Campaigners opposing Persimmon Homes' application to build 93 properties on Bootham Crescent are now looking to see whether a football ground can be classed as a community venue.

But Cliff Carruthers, of City of York Council, said it was unlikely it would be considered in the same way that a church hall, or educational rooms were.

David Allison, of the Friends of Bootham Crescent, said: "This is a really interesting decision. We feel there is a lot that Persimmon have not taken into account."

Sophie McGill, spokeswoman for the York City Supporters' Trust, cautiously welcomed the news. She said: "It is another encouraging factor and another ground for objection. But we still don't know where we stand, because the club is in crisis."

Updated: 12:00 Thursday, November 21, 2002