A sports club's hopes of £150,000 of funding to build a new club house have been dashed.

Little Lever Sports Club, in Mytham Road, applied to Sports England for their Community Asset Fund, which is awarded to clubs to help improve facilities.

The club hoped to use the money, along with £50,000 raised themselves to build a brand new state-of-the-art club house.

The building would have had five changing rooms, a kitchen and a large function room.

It would have also had disabled facilities and car parking for up to 45 vehicles.

Projects Manager at Little Lever Sports Club, Alec Bingham said: "After 18 months of meetings, consultations, architects plans, emails, form filling, and fundraising, the club were devastated when they were informed by Sport England that they are not going to help with funding for a new club house."

According to Mr Bingham, the letter they received from Sport England did not give a reason to why they had not secured the funding.

When he rang up, Mr Bingham claims he was told by Sport England's Investment Manager Howard Thompson that the club was too "football heavy".

The club are now asking to hear from people who think they can help with the project.

A spokesman for Sport England said: “We receive thousands of applications for funding from the Community Asset Fund and have to prioritise projects that are going to benefit the broadest range of people from the community, in line with our mission to help everyone, regardless of age, background or ability to get active.

"While the Little Lever Sports Club provides an invaluable service to the community, funding was not granted in the instance because the application for a new clubhouse did not provide sufficient detail as to how the project was capable of increasing activity levels in a variety of sports and underrepresented groups.

"We have suggested alternative sources of funding to the club and wish them every success.”