AN ENTERPRISING resident has created a calendar of her village - but in place of rolling countryside and quaint houses she has featured rotting rubbish and broken windows.

Chris Grimwood decided to create a calander to send to her council showing scenes from her village of vandalised gardens and derelict homes.

March shows a settee abandoned beside a house, April a rubbish-strewn garden against a backdrop of graffiti and September a boarded-up house with an overgrown yard.

All the photographs in her 2003 calendar were taken since the turn of the year in streets surrounding her home on the White Hill Crescent Estate in Pelton Fell and sent to Chester-le-Street District Council.

In her covering letter, Mrs Grimwood said: "I challenge you to hang this calendar on your wall and look at it every day of the forthcoming year. My family and I are expected by Chester-le-Street Council to accept these surroundings until they see fit to redevelop the area. At the end of the day you can choose whether you place this on your wall and look at it daily, or you can put it in the bin - unfortunately I have no other choice."

The area is currently in line for regeneration in the near future and the council is carrying out consultation with tenants over improvements.

Although Mrs Grimwood is aware of the council's intentions, she is concerned that until then her family will have to live in what she describes as 'squalor.'

Housing manager Brian O'Doherty said: "We've done consultation on the estate through a variety of meetings and questionnaires and now we're actually working with some resident representatives to finalise the actual development brief for the estate."