ELDERLY residents living in sheltered housing are unwittingly paying for CCTV coverage in a town centre.

People living in sheltered housing and other vulnerable residents in the Chester-le-Street district pay for the Careline Service that monitors the alarms in their homes, but staff monitoring the alarms are also responsible for monitoring CCTV in the town centre.

The arrangement results in residents footing the bill for a vast portion of the costs involved in the town centre surveillance system.

The arrangement has been criticised by the Audit Commission, which is currently monitoring progress made by Chester-le-Street District Council's housing department since a damning report last year.

The commission inspectors recently put a draft report before the council in which it again assesses the council as running a 'poor' service.'

A final report from the Audit Commission is expected to be made public at the end of September, after inspectors receive the council's response.

The arrangement has been in place since 1996, but the council is only now proposing to make changes because of a regulation that requires support charges to be identified. It has cost the housing department an estimated £115,000 a year, with £6,000 coming from the council's general fund.

In a leaked report, the inspectors state: "In our view this is an unfair practice, as vulnerable residents of the district who are amongst the most economically disadvantaged are effectively paying for a service that all residents, including council tax payers ,benefit from."

They add: "Whilst these are separate services and it is reasonable to expect separate charges to be levied for them, some tenants are in effect paying for the same service twice, through their Careline charges and then through council tax payments."

The report also criticises the housing department for failing to spend a quarter of its budget at a time when it has delayed some repairs because of a lack of funds.

Inspectors stated that during 2001/02 the department still had £134,000 to spend.

Chester-le-Street District Council said it was not in a position to comment before the final report was published in September.

A spokesman for the council said: "The Audit Commission has advised us not to comment publicly because the report is still in draft and they advised us to wait until the final report is published."