Plans to transfer Bradford's 26,000 Council houses to an external trust with no watchdog to monitor it afterwards have sparked anger at a committee meeting.

Now the Council's Health and Housing Scrutiny Committee will express concern that it has lost its role to monitor the service and will seek talks with director of housing Geraldine Howley on the issue.

The committee will also seek full details of the final agreement between the Council and new community trusts before a final decision is made.

Councillor Amir Hussain (Lab, University) said the committee should continue to monitor the services after the houses were transferred, in the same way as the education scrutiny committee.

But chairman Councillor Grahame Thornton (Lib Dem, Baildon) said Education Bradford was only managing the service and the houses would be completely owned by a new organisation.

Councillor Valerie Binnie (Con, Thornton) said it was up to the Government to say if it wanted the Council to continue to scrutinise it. But she said the role of the committee was to make sure the service was not run down and tenants were looked after properly until the time of the transfer early next year.

Councillor David Herdson (Con, Shipley West) said: "We can't treat them as council houses when they belong to somebody else."

He added there would be both councillors and tenants on the board of the new organisation, who would have power if they objected to anything.

But Coun Hussain said: "We ourselves are diminishing the responsibilities of all four scrutiny committees if we do this.

"The Council has made a lot of promises about what will happen with housing. It is our duty to make sure they are fulfilled. There is nothing to say we can't do this."

Last month 10,837 tenants voted in favour of transferring the houses to the newly formed Bradford Community Housing Trust, with 6,580 voting against.

Members of the Executive Committee will be asked next week to provide £6.6 million for the cost of the transfer. Officers say it could be recovered from the proceeds of the sale by the Council.