FORMER Blackpool council-run care homes, closed down earlier this year amid a storm of controversy, have now met with mixed fates.

Two of the homes -- Whitegate Manor on Whitegate Drive, Blackpool, and Kipling Manor, on Kipling Drive, Marton -- are still owned by the council.

But the other two -- Warren Manor on Warren Drive, Cleveleys, and Low Moor Manor on Low Moor Road, North Shore -- have been sold or are in the process of being sold.

The sale of Warren Manor has been approved by the council and the sale was in the hands of the council's legal department this week.

A bid of £255,000 was accepted for the home at an executive committee meeting in July. The bid was based on refurbishing and extending the existing accommodation and replacing the flat roof with a pitched roof. Parkgate Community Care, based at Bispham Village Chambers, Red Bank Road, Bispham, are set to buy the former home. Staff at Parkgate this week confirmed that the sale was going ahead but said that it was too early to say whether the firm would re-open Warren Manor as a care home.

Another of the defunct homes, Low Moor Manor on Low Moor Road, North Shore, has been sold to Trinity Hospice on the Fylde, also based on Low Moor Road. The former home has recently been demolished and no details of plans for the site were available at the time of going to press.

And Whitegate Manor, which is still council-owned, is being temporarily used to house the residents of Stratford House -- another council-run care home -- while it is being refurbished.

Whitegate Manor had been boarded up until the elderly residents moved in about a month ago. Steve Gross, head of advice care and management at the council, said that Stratford House, on the same site as Whitegate Manor, was undergoing a £550,000 overhaul to meet new care standards in time for the Care Standards Act next April.

"Stratford House is about 25 per cent complete at the moment so I'm not sure how long residents will be there," he said.

He added that social services were also hoping to upgrade Hoyle House, on Argosy Avenue, in which case Hoyle House residents would temporarily move to Whitegate Manor.

But the long-term future of the home was less certain. "In all probability we would seek to dispose of it," he said.

And he said that Kipling Manor, the other defunct council home, was currently empty and boarded up. "It hasn't been put on the market and we are considering various uses for it," he said.

Some of the options were possible partnerships with housing associations, or possible use as a day resource centre.

"Hopefully it would continue to be used for the benefit of elderly people. In the meantime it will remain boarded up. It has been secured. Hopefully we will make decisions on it fairly quickly," he added.

But Tory councillor Ian Dodd, whose motion to improve the former homes to reduce the blight on the surrounding communities was lost at a council meeting on August 29, said he was disappointed that the properties were just going to be left.

"The properties have just fallen into decay. I feel that something has got to be done with them before the local yob culture takes over and starts to vandalise them," he said.