THE owner of a former post office has vowed to open it as a sex shop after being barred from converting it into a house.

Andrew Hennesseys application to turn the former Blacko post office and shop, Gisburn Road, into a cottage was turned down because it did not demonstrate the special circumstances needed to go against Pendle's housing moratorium.

With a number of housing developments having planning permission applicants have to give evidence of special circumstances why they should also be given approval.

The shop has been painted entirely black since October, when Mr Hennessey also daubed it with writing saying "XXXX" and "For Adults Only" suggesting it was a sex shop.

This, he said, had been a protest following a dispute with his next-door neighbour, and since then some of the more risque phrases have been blanked out.

But he said it had given him the idea of looking into the trade more seriously.

Mr Hennessey said he felt villagers were blaming him for the loss of their post office, and that the planning decision had been a punishment for painting the building.

He claimed opening the sex shop was the only way a profit could be made from the shop, which closed as a post office last year when he found he was losing thousands of pounds, and that it was his only alternative after his house plan had been turned down by Pendle Council.

He said: "The council has missed its chance to have it turned into a picturesque cottage so now we are going to have to open it as a novelty shop because that's the only thing I think we could sell from there.

"But we will have to box clever because the law is very ambiguous - as far as I can tell, I can sell sex toys, magazines and videos without a licence, but there won't be anything explicit outside.

"It's not a revenge tactic - I can't have a house there so I have had to look at other things, and I think this is something we can make a profit on. This sort of thing is becoming more acceptable all the time - if you go into the Trafford Centre there's a huge Ann Summers shop but nobody says that's disgusting."

One resident at the meeting of Pendle Council's Barrowford and Western Parishes Committee, where the decision was made, said it was a "disgrace" that Mr Hennessey had been allowed to paint the building to look like a sex shop. Committee chairman Councillor Linda Crossley said afterwards that Mr Hennessey was entitled to sell whatever he liked in the shop, as long as he remained within the law.