NEARLY half a million pounds has been set aside to demolish unwanted council homes in St Helen Auckland this year.

About £400,000 has been set aside for a demolition programme in the area, where empty properties attract vandalism and other anti-social behaviour.

There are nearly 100 empty council homes on the Dene Hall estate alone, but local people will decide the best course of action to be taken at a meeting of the St Helens steering group committee.

The committee, which is made up of tenants, councillors, headteachers and members of other agencies, will meet on April 15.

It will discuss the results of a housing consultancy survey and the committee's views will then be passed on to Wear Valley District Council.

Options range from bulldozing whole streets to demolishing selected homes.

Wear Valley district councillor Sonny Douthwaite said it was likely to provoke some strong views, because some of the homes that might be affected were privately owned.

He said: "There is a lot of concern because people have bought houses in some places, like on the Dene Hall estate, where there is suggested demolition, so they will want compensation."

On Bishop Auckland's Woodhouse Close estate, a programme of demolition has been welcomed.

The district council is proposing to bulldoze four bungalows in Farndale Square, near Tindale Crescent, and eight homes in Howard Close. The areas will then be grassed over.

The authority's director of housing, Michael Laing, said the request to demolish the houses in Howard Close came from residents.

He said: "It is not because they are bad homes, because they are structurally sound.

"It is because a very small minority have chosen to carry out anti-social behaviour there.

"Howard Close is 70 per cent lovely, but 30 per cent is not so nice. I don't see why the people who live there should have to look at unsightly homes."

The proposals will go before councillors at a planning meeting on Thursday.

At the end of last year, the council demolished two streets on the estate - Ford Way and Coney Avenue.

One of the options being considered for the area includes building supported accommodation for teenage mothers