'I'm buying a church in my Black Country hometown to save it from redevelopment - and if I succeed I'll let the right group use it rent-free'

Mr Leeds, who owns property developments in the UK and internationally, said in a video on Instagram he had made a cash offer of £225,000 for Darlaston Methodist Church, which had been set for conversion by developers.

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"I just put down a cash offer of £225,000 to buy this church that was about to be closed down and sold off to developers," Mr Leeds said on Instagram.

"I just can't have a building that was built to glorify Jesus being turned into something to just make profit.

"This is my hometown. We're in Darlaston, Walsall; I grew up around these ends.

"I'm going to buy this and I'm going to offer it completely free of charge, zero rent, to a church that is prepared to worship Jesus here, yes, but also feed the hungry, clothe the naked and house the homeless in the streets of the Black Country."

The 34-year-old said he grew up in Walsall, attending Emmanuel Christian School in Caldmore and living in Bloxwich and other areas.

He said: "The link to [the church] for me is that it's just 10 minutes away from where I grew up and I just saw it boarded up and felt sad, to be honest, then I rang up the agent and found out there were 16 developers interested in it.

"I'm a developer myself, so I do totally get it, but I just thought that if we're not careful, we're going to end up with no churches as they'll all be bought up by developers.

"That's the reason why I'm working to buy it, to put it back as a church, and I've been having quite a lot of meetings with the people that are going to work with me on it, so it's quite exciting."

Mr Leeds said he had recently upped his offer to £250,000 due to the level of interest - but he said he was confident he'd be able to buy the freehold and stop the church from becoming another of the many he had seen closed over the country.

He said: "When I was driving from Heathrow to the Midlands recently, I drove past a whole bunch that were boarded up for sale and I think there's about 3,500 that have been sold off to developers and turned into all sorts of stuff, from HMOs to flats and mosques, but not churches.

"I think that we need churches open, not just from a religious perspective, but from the fact that the churches do a lot of good, such as this one as it used to run a soup kitchen and do a lot of work in the community.

"I'm Christian and my faith is something that's quite important and integral to me and I think that if it's doing good for the community and it's a Bible-believing church, then I'm all for it."

Mr Leeds is already working with an African church he hopes will use the church rent-free, as well as open up a soup kitchen and a place for homeless people to use once a week.

He said he was looking forward to being able to give the church a new life as a community hub alongside the other work he was doing in Walsall.

He said: "There's a church I'm already working with where we do stuff like a soup kitchen which the volunteers run and they've got so many volunteers ready to just do stuff.

"I'm also turning one of my own investment properties into a rebuild-your-life centre for homeless people in Walsall, which they will be able to run, so there's a lot of exciting things going on.

"To be able to buy this church would just be the cherry on top."

The work to buy the church is the latest endeavour by the multi-millionaire, who has previously created his own board game about property development, opened a new ward at the Ugandan hospital where on-duty doctor saved his legs after being involved in an accident and won £200,000 for his charitable foundation, after beating his arch rival in a boxing grudge match.