PLANS to spend £27,000 on demolishing and replacing a bus shelter in Church Street have run into trouble again.

The long-running saga over the Claremont House shelter appeared to be at an end last month when Malvern Town Council's environment and leisure committee approved the project.

But a row over whether that committee or the council's planning and transportation committee is responsible for bus shelters broke out at Monday night's full council meeting.

Decisions on the work on the Church Street shelter and the removal of a shelter at Link Top will now have to wait until after a special meeting of full council has ruled on which committee should look at the issues.

A date for the meeting, approved by 19 votes with just one abstention, has yet to be decided.

Speaking after the meeting Malvern Town Action Group councillor Keith Phillips welcomed the chance to look at the bus shelter issue again.

He said: "We are relieved that it is being reconsidered because the idea of spending £27,000 on a bus shelter is in our view horrendous."

The Claremont House bus shelter has been shored up for over a year to minimise any risk to the public from crumbling concrete.

A new shelter itself would cost only £7,000 to £8,000 with demolition, excavation and the restoration of a pavement making up the rest of the costs.

Malvern Town Council was was originally warned in a report in 2000 the bus shelter presented a potential health and safety hazard.

Taxpayers were told then it would cost up to £20,000 to demolish and replace the shelter.

The former acting-town clerk Rosemary Lansdowne failed to get Parish Initiatives Fund money for the new shelter in December last year.