BACKBENCH councillors have claimed a vital report was weighted so county hall bosses would have no choice but to close Lancashire care homes.

The conclusion came in a report by a task group of ten councillors, who were asked to scrutinise plans to shut most of the county council's 48 care homes, including a handful in Preston and South Ribble.

Labour's county council leader Hazel Harding branded the claim as "nonsense" but said it proved that they were allowing everyone to have their say on the proposals. Members of the internal overview and scrutiny committee were expected to discuss the task group's findings on Wednesday.

Two county councillors were asked to go into each district and look at the plans after they were announced in January, prompting widespread objections.

They were asked to see what they thought of the details of the Pinders report, which was carried out by consultants to give a cost of repairing and refurbishing the homes.

The report stated that £4.5million was needed to bring the homes up to new government standards due to be implemented in 2007, and a further £10million was needed to refurbish the homes to what was deemed an acceptable standard.

County Councillor Chris Cheetham, who is in charge of social services, has already delayed the final decision over whether to close the care homes for a month, until August.

But Ms Harding said: "It is simply not true that we asked Pinders to produce a report so we could close the homes. We asked them to tell us how much it would cost to bring them up to government standards and how much to fully refurbish them.The figures are not unrealistic."