Otley's MP has appealed to the owners of a town centre pub to allow it to be turned into a “desperately needed” hotel.

Greg Mulholland believes the Black Horse Hotel, on Westgate, could be converted into a “landmark coaching inn” for the town with the right investment.

So he has written to the business’s current owners, Enterprise Inns, asking if they would either consider converting the pub into a hotel themselves or selling it to an operator who would.

In his letter to the firm’s chief executive, Ted Tuppen, Mr Mulholland says he believes “it is very important to Otley as a tourist town that you consider selling the Black Horse as part of Enterprise Inns’ ongoing review of its properties in the area”.

Mr Mulholland told the Wharfedale & Airedale Observer: “Efforts are being made by the town council and town partnership to promote tourism in Otley, already progress has been made and I commend them on this. We are all agreed, though, that Otley desperately needs a decent hotel and the news that the riverside development at Garnett's Mill will not have one is a blow.”

“There is now one obvious place for a genuine, good quality small hotel and that is the Black Horse,” said Mr Mulholland. “It would take real investment, but it could become Otley’s landmark coaching inn, the way the White Horse was many years ago. This is an opportunity Otley cannot afford to miss.”

Mr Tuppen has now replied to say he has “noted” the MP’s comments and “will certainly bear them in mind.”

He has also invited Mr Mulholland to meet Enterprise Inns’ regional manager and to accompany him on some fact-finding visits to the company’s pubs in the area.