HELPING to transform the soon-to-be redundant Grade Two listed hospital in The Avenue, Minehead, has become a top priority for West Somerset Council.

Cabinet members pledged to give the Minehead Development Trust the authority's full support in its bid to turn the old hospital into a privately funded 'hub' for creative and community enterprise.

They were told the trust had secured £51,000 from the Future Builders' Fund to carry out a technical study of the building, while an architect had also offered support.

Executive director Adrian Dyer said the hospital would soon be put up for sale and both he and the authority's economic regeneration manager Corrine Matthews had already had a "very positive" meeting with the trust and the building's owners, the Somerset Primary Care Trust.

"The projected outcome is a very real possibility and if members wish us to support this further there could a positive outcome from it," Mr Dyer said.

Ms Matthews said the next step would be to get planning permission and secure more funding and she was confident the scheme would come to fruition.

Earlier this year, the group behind the project invited developers to put forward ideas for the ancillary buildings at the back of the old hospital, with possibilities ranging from an indoor tourism attraction to housing or offices.

It hoped bringing a developer on board for the former nurses' home and police station at the rear of the site would enable it to keep the heart of the hospital - the front and main part of the grade two listed building - for the community.

Suggestions put forward so far include a library, exhibition and museum space, a community arts centre, study rooms, offices and even a place to celebrate the work and theories of Minehead-born author Arthur C Clarke.

Finance lead member Cllr Kate Kravis said the finer details of the scheme were commercially sensitive but she was optimistic about its future.

"I did look at it at the start and it did it look like a big pipe-dream. I dearly want this to happen," she said.

The building will become redundant when a state-of-the-art £26 million new hospital opens off Seaward Way early next year.