Devastated tower block residents in Thorpe Edge say the decision to stick with Brad-ford Council has lost the estate £4 million - not £1.9 million.

The Telegraph & Argus reported yesterday how hundreds of tenants rejected the chance to opt out of Council control and set up a housing association.

In a residents' poll, 348 voted in favour of the status quo and 260 people voted 'yes' to opting out, in an 84 per cent turnout.

The decision means that the estate misses out on £1.9 million which will now go back to Government coffers. The opportunity for tenants to have a much greater say has also gone.

Tenants' representative Peter Hatherall, 61, who lives in Warren House, said: "Now we are back to square one. The Council has openly admitted it has no extra money for repairs. I am absolutely gutted that we are being left with the status quo."

York House tenant Grahame Beacher, 61, who also favoured opting out, added: "This vote will prove to be the totally wrong thing to have done. Where could Bradford Council ever find £4 million to spend in Thorpe Edge? Forty pence, more like."

Crestfallen campaigners believe the local residents - many of them elderly - have conservative attitudes and did not trust the housing association. They also feared their rents would rise.

If tenants had voted to opt out, the Yorkshire Metropolitan Housing Association would have created a new, nought-for-profit organisation, the Idlethorp Housing Trust. The scheme would have been awarded £1.9 million by the Government, and another £2 million would have been borrowed from the bank for improvements including new lighting, carpeting and doors, new kitchens and central heating in walk up, low rise blocks and improved security in Idle Village old people's accommodation and Brunswick House

Bill Payne, managing director of the YMHA, said: "People have explained their decision as 'staying with the devil they know. We weren't offering them an alternative devil, we were offering them the scope to do something themselves."

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