Burnley FC may have been relegated from football’s Premier League this month, but the Lancashire mill town will soon have a premier league restaurant if a new “fine dining” venue lives up to its promise.

Burnley Council has given a green light to plans to convert a disused Georgian pub, The Waterloo, into a 30-cover restaurant with private dining facilities and an open kitchen. The Waterloo is in the “Weavers’ Triangle” of historic early industrial buildings that made Burnley the world’s most important cotton-weaving town in the second half of the 19th century.

Local property company Spacious Place Life is behind the project alongside chef Joe McLeod, who has worked at nearby Ribble Valley gastronomic powerhouse Northcote as well as Ryan Giggs’s Manchester restaurant, George. He currently runs McLeod 9, offering a fine dining at home service, and runs cookery schools across the northwest.

The planning application states: “Spacious Place Life have the aspiration to bring to Burnley the first Michelin star-rated restaurant… It will serve to bring a new distinguished culinary-based focal point for Burnley, which will have a positive impact on the surrounding Weavers’ Triangle and give a refined alternative to the abundant fast-food outlets that are close by.”

The venue will operate as a restaurant in the evenings, while serving coffee and “healthy” takeaways to local people and students by day as an alternative to the neighbouring fast-food outlets along Trafalgar Street, such as Greggs, McDonalds, KFC and Subway.