THE owners of Butlins in Minehead were staying tight-lipped this week over the prospective sale of the holiday centre.

Parent company Rank Group is reported to have been offered a £700 million deal by privately-owned caravan park operator Bourne Leisure.

The deal would include a buy-out of Rank's entire holiday division including Butlins, Warner Holidays and Haven caravan parks.

It is believed to be the latter which Bourne wants to get its hands on as the country's second largest caravan operator. Haven is currently the largest.

Business insiders said it was likely Bourne would offload the Butlins camps at Minehead, Skegness and Bognor Regis once it had secured Haven.

Butlins made an operating loss of £2 million just months after a massive £150 million makeover.

The move would tie-in with Rank's current business policy of breaking up the company little by little in order to reduce soaring debts. Its sale of bars, nightclubs, cinemas and Pinewood Studios has already netted £700 million.

On a local level, Minehead Chamber of Commerce chairman Mike Padgett said he was well aware of the sell-off rumours circulating in the national press.

"I cannot believe that Bourne Leisure would want to hold on to parts of the holiday division such as Warner Holidays and Butlins," he said.

"As chairman of the chamber of trade I can only hope that if Butlins is sold off it will go to someone who knows the business and could bring it back to its past glory of the late 80s and early 90s."

However, Chris Dyer of the West Somerset Watchdogs said it was simply time for local people to stop supporting "the ageing dinosaur".

He accused West Somerset District Council of propping up Butlins for too long at the expense of all else and said the opportunity was now there to reverse Minehead's decline.

He said: "We have been warning about this happening for the last 10 years.

"Minehead has been going downhill as a town as Butlins has gone downmarket to try and attract more people to go there.

"It is time to establish Minehead's own identity and this must be the start of it."

Officially, nothing has been confirmed from either side with Rank refusing to comment on "press speculation" and Bourne stating: "We do not comment on rumours".

Industry sources, however, are confident an announcement could be made in the next seven days about the future of the Rank group and more importantly its Butlins centres.