A LOCAL authority which says it cannot afford to keep all of its council housing stock has decided on an arm's-length management approach.

The future of Wear Valley District Council's housing stock has been the subject of heated debate with tenants for the past few months.

Along with local authorities all over the country, the council has had to review the management of its council houses under the Government's guidelines on decent standards for homes.

Public meetings and roadshows were held throughout the district, and residents expressed a preference in those meetings for the council to keep their stock.

But the council has always maintained that it would not be able to afford to bring its 5,400 homes up to the Government-set standard and has been seeking an alternative option.

A decision on what to do with the stock was deferred earlier this year to allow further public consultation. But last week, members of the council's housing committee were asked to make a choice.

They were given four options:

* Stock retention;

* Transfer to a housing association;

* A private finance initiative;

* Arm's-length management.

Councillor Neil Stonehouse said: "This decision has been a long time coming.

"We have had consultations and debates and now the time has come to make a decision.

"On the figures we have, available stock retention is not an option.''

He said that, in an ideal world, large-scale voluntary transfer would be a solution, but those tenants who had taken part in surveys undertaken by the council preferred the fourth option -the Arm's Length Management Organisation (Almo).

This means that the council will still own the homes but could set up an independent management company to manage the stock.

The company could then seek extra funds to meet the requirements of the decent homes standard.

All councillors attending the meeting voted in favour of the arm's-length option.

Afterwards, Norman Button, secretary of the Woodhouse Close Estate Residents' Group, said that only a portion of the residents had voted, and that the decision did not represent the majority of residents, who did not want Almo.

He said: "Six to seven people have just taken away the rights of 7,000 tenants to decide the future of their own homes.

"This is not democracy. The tenants should vote on what they want and, if they did, Almo would not go through."