CATTLE market bosses are planning a £1.5 million move to a new home to save their business from closing.

Congleton Cattle Market catered for 700 animals in the early 1980s, but numbers have fallen to 30 a week.

Site owners Whittaker and Biggs are now looking to create a smaller, more modern market on a 150-acre farm site.

The move would be funded in part by selling the current cattle market site to a housing developer.

The existing site is seen as capable of catering for 60 to 70 houses, although the land is allocated for employment uses in the draft local plan.

The market is situated on the Macclesfield Road opposite Jackson Road, and has been hard hit by the BSE and foot and mouth crises.

Whittaker and Biggs plans to spend £900,000 on buying a 150-acre farm on a main road location in the borough, and hopes to raise £390,000 by selling the existing 130-acre site.

The costs of converting farm buildings into a modern cattle market and antique furniture auction are estimated at £700,000.

"Whittaker and Biggs has been considering development for housing for some time because of the difficulties of continuing to run a viable operation because of the BSE crisis," said a spokesman for agents Robert Turley Associates.

"However it has been the foot and mouth outbreak, which completly closed down operations in February 2001, which has led the company to more seriously review the future of the cattle market."

As a result of the BSE crisis the number of animals at the market fell to 250 by 1995, and 100 in 2000.

The market closed between February and October last year, and has reopened only as a low-key collection centre dealing with 30 cattle a week.

"The company has come to the view it is not viable to retain operations on a site of this size in outdated buildings," added the spokesman.

"A smaller, more modern development is required if that aspect of the business is to continue at all.

"This can only be achieved by obtaining residential value for the existing site in order to relocate."

No alternative site has been identified, but the company is looking for an existing farm rather than an unused site.