THE opening party for the region's biggest club for swingers has been postponed, while the venue owners meet concerned police chiefs and council bosses.

The Northern Echo revealed last week that the former King's Head Hotel in Stanley, County Durham, is to re-open as The Love Shack, a private club offering facilities for wife-swapping and group sex.

The opening party was to take place on October 31. But Rob Rostron and Viv Archer, the couple behind the venture, have put it off in a bid to placate rising opposition.

Mr Rostron said: "We could open tomorrow if we wanted to, but we have nothing to hide and we want any issues resolved, so we have put back the opening party by two or three weeks."

He met for crisis talks with planning chiefs at Derwentside District Council yesterday. Council leader Alex Watson said: "We feel we have been deceived and that these people have not been honest with us."

Last year, the authority granted planning permission for the site, believing that it was going to be a leisure club.

It has a team of six officers working on the case and is consulting expert barristers, to check that the planning application was legal.

But the owners believe that, because it is a private club, it is operating within the law.

"If sex in a hotel is illegal, then we would have to close down every hotel in the country," said Mr Rostron. "This is a private, discreet, fantasy world for adults. We have taken a rat-infested, derelict building and transformed it."

Archer and Rostron Ltd bought the four-storey property, in the High Street, for £46,000 last year. More than 200 people have signed up to use its nine themed rooms and two bondage dungeons.

Ward councillor Claire Vasey started a petition at the weekend calling for its closure and has already collected 600 signatures. An emergency meeting of the council's development control committee will be held on Thursday next week.