Members of a Hindu community said they are "devastated" after a city council upheld a decision to sell their place of worship.
The Bharat Hindu Samaj temple in Peterborough serves around 13,000 Hindus from across Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Lincolnshire. Peterborough City Council decided to sell the temple in 2025 amid huge financial challenges, saying at the time it needed to "look after the public purse".
The trustees of the temple believed a price had been agreed to buy the site, but were dismayed to learn that the council put it on the open market and had selected a bidder. Despite that decision being referred back to the cabinet, the decision, described as "painful" by one councillor, was upheld at a meeting on Tuesday night.
Kishor Ladwa, president of the Bharat Hindu Samaj, said: "We are devastated. We've got a huge community here in Peterborough and the surrounding area.
"It's like a home. It's the only temple in the whole of East Anglia and people come here for prayers, community activities."
Temple trustee Rasila Panchal said: "It's very upsetting. We are devastated by the news; it's heartbreaking, the sheer work that has gone into getting to where we are here.
"They've committed time, money, their heart and soul into here and this has just been snatched away from us." Local councillor Roger Antunes said he was "extremely disappointed" by the news.
"I'm very saddened for the community. As you're aware, we fought hard over the last few months to secure this, which is the preferred place, to base themselves.
"I feel that at the time, there were options available to the council to negotiate this [...] That hasn't been taken forward. And as I said, the decision has been made."
Councillor Mohammed Jamil, the cabinet member for finance, said: "A decision was made by cabinet in December to go ahead with the sale.
"That decision was called in by some of our council colleagues, who then recommended that we look at the sale again, consider the information again, and look at more detailed information, which the council has done now. I'm glad to say that the cabinet looked at it and it was a painful decision to make, but unfortunately for the trustees, the decision is now for us to proceed with the sale as recommended.
"We've gone through the process again. We've gone through the way that we set the whole sale up.
“Our officers have looked at it and cabinet has looked at it. And we came to the same conclusion that we will go ahead with the sale."