COUNCIL tenants' homes in Monmouthshire are falling apart - as housing chiefs admit they have run out of money for repairs and maintenance.

Councillors were yesterday told £60.5m is needed to bring the council's housing stock up to National Assembly standards by 2012 but the budget for this year's housing maintenance and repairs programme is half of last year's.

Steve Greenslade, corpor-ate director of resources and customer services, described the situation as "bleak", adding: "In previous years we've built up considerable reserves. But reserves can only be spent once and ours have gone."

The shortfall is because of reduced funding from the Assembly, smaller discounts for tenants buying their own council properties, and the council's failure to budget for the future.

Monmouthshire has 3,860 council properties - around 3,000 have kitchens over 15 years old.

Lillian and Walter Moore, of Old Hereford Road, Abergavenny, have been waiting 20 years for decorating and full repairs to their home. Mrs Moore, 80, said: "Others living nearby have had new kitchens and bathrooms but our flat has damp all over it, inside and out. It's a mess.

"The council sent someone to repair our kitchen when the ceiling fell in January. He left the job half done but he said that was all he was allowed to do. "It makes me howl, I feel like bursting into tears - this flat should not be lived in." This year, Monmouth-shire's housing services department has £1,224,000 to work with compared to £2,528,200 last year, meaning planned improvements to estates cannot go ahead.

The council also plans to scrap a programme of kitchen and bathroom renewal. Monmouthshire councillor Graham Down called the situation "depressing", adding: "The only chance we have is to encourage tenants to buy their properties and re-invest the money from the sales in the rest of our stock.

"But that is being made impossible by UK government and Assembly policy to slash the discounts offered to tenants who want to buy. The discounts were long standing policy but since April this year, tenants who were once entitled to £50,000 off their property when buying it, can only get £16,000 off."

There are 1,749 people on the waiting list for council homes.