A CRUMBLING police station has fetched four times its expected value at auction - and could now be turned into flats.

Developers became locked in a bidding war which pushed the price of Westhoughton police station well beyond the guide value of £70,000.

The mystery buyer paid £276,000 for the Victorian building and planners are now expecting to receive proposals to convert the police station into flats - or even demolish it.

Paul Thompson, director of Pugh and Company Auctioneers, said he was shocked at the price the station fetched.

"There is always quite a lot of interest in police stations but we were surprised at the level this reached," he said.

"We cannot release the name of the buyer or the nature of their business but I would imagine that the building will either be converted into flats or demolished and replaced with new buildings. There is potential for development on the site."

The station was left empty in 2004 after officers moved to a new "deployment centre" at Middlebrook.

Councillors criticised a decision to close the station, saying it would leave the town without adequate police cover, but police chiefs said the station had become expensive to maintain and no longer met the demands of modern policing.

A shop-style police post opened on Pavilion Square to allow members of the public a point of contact with police.

Westhoughton councillor David Wilkinson, said: "I'd be very surprised if we didn't see an application to turn this into flats or houses very soon.

"The number of units would depend on what the developers want to do but it would be a maximum of about eight dwellings."