A MEETING today between housing officers and tenants could decide the future ownership of council homes in Teesdale.

The council housing situation in the area has reached crisis point, with Teesdale District Council facing a repair backlog of £758,885 and an estimated bill of £24m to bring properties up to new Government standards over the next 30 years.

The Government wants every council home in the country to meet the Decent Home standard by 2010, but less than 30 per cent of local authority-owned properties in Teesdale meet the standard.

Experts believe it could cost the council as much as £700,000 a year until 2004 and more than £1m in 2005 to carry out improvements.

Options that have been put forward so far are for the council to retain ownership of houses, hand them over to a housing association, use the Private Finance Initiative or set up an "arms length management organisation" to resolve the crisis.

Councillors at present appear to favour selling the authority's 1,000 houses.

Selling the homes has also been identified as the only plausible solution in a report from a team of independent consultants.

At a meeting held behind closed doors to discuss the situation, members of the council decided that a tenants' advisor should be appointed to ask every council tenant what action they feel should be taken.

Julie Fuller, the district council's housing policy officer, said: "This is a massive issue for every council house tenant in Teesdale and we are eager to find out what people want."

During today's meeting of the Housing Forum, tenant representatives will discuss the options and tenants will be invited to give opinions.

The meeting will be held at the council offices, in Galgate, Barnard Castle, at 2.30pm.