BODIES will have to be exhumed if an extension to the grade II* listed Settle Friends' Meeting House goes ahead.

At a meeting of Craven District Council's planning committee, Coun Richard Welch said there were up to 19 bodies buried in the area covered by the extension plans.

The application has now been given recommended approval by Craven District Council's planning committee to the Deputy Prime Minister's Office which will make the actual decision due to the building's grade II star listed status.

Quakers at the Settle Meeting House on Kirkgate are now seeking advice on how to arrange the exhumation process. They have notified the Home Office of their intentions and have been sent a copy of the regulations. After the extension approval has been confirmed they can apply for a licence to carry out the work.

The graves, all of which are over 200 years old, will have to be dug up in tandem with the building of the extension, which will not start for several months.

Treasurer of the building appeal, John Geale, said: "The extension will be partly over an old burial ground. This is very common with church extensions. The home office gives you two options; to exhume and rebury or you can render them inaccessible and cover them over. We will be carrying out the first option and we will do everything with great respect and care."

The extension will provide the meeting house with new toilets, including a disabled facility, kitchen and Sunday school. Architect Anthony Dalby of Mason Gillibrand, who is also a member of the Settle Quakers, told the planners at the meeting that the extension had the backing of other groups both locally and nationally.

He said: "We have twins with cerebral palsy who come to the meetings and there's about seven steps and they are narrow so people have to carry them up to the meeting in their wheelchairs. That has been a fundamental reason why members want to see this extension go ahead."

The project has encountered some objections prompted by concerns that the extension and alterations will ruin the listed building's image.

The report to the planning committee included a letter which stated: "The current plans, if approved would inflict irreparable damage to the historic Meeting House and its setting. This would spoil the overall scale, proportion and visual integrity of the building, its simplicity and placing in the townscape."