COUNCIL official Kevin Gove told a woman who complained about a vandalised bus shelter in March that Fenland District Council does not have funds waiting to be spent on such issues . The woman complained after she fell backwards off the seat in the Broad

COUNCIL official Kevin Gove told a woman who complained about a vandalised bus shelter in March that "Fenland District Council does not have funds waiting to be spent on such issues".

The woman complained after she fell backwards off the seat in the Broad Street shelter outside Tesco. A clear panel, which might have protected her, had been taken out after being vandalised.

The asset engineer wrote to the woman, who is not identified, and said he was concerned on health and safety grounds and reassured her: "I personally removed the perch-style seat at 6am the following morning to eliminate the danger of anyone else suffering a similar mishap.

"I apologise if this has caused you and other users any inconvenience but I take health and safety seriously and deemed this an essential action."

Mr Gove also revealed that Fenland has recently taken back control of 25 bus shelters from the county council "and we have subsequently prioritised where our budgets are being spent.

"It has been deemed that bus shelter replacement and repairs, except emergencies, are not high on the list of priorities."

The shelters, he said, are expensive to install and maintain, especially when they incur "repeated vandalism".

He told the woman: "I reinstated the glass plane to the shelter earlier this year, only to have it kicked out the following evening by youths." It cost £800 to repair it.

However, he said others had complained about Broad Street shelters and although there were other shelters in a worse state of repair, he had now authorised repairs - and would put a back rest on the bench to stop anyone falling backwards in future.

Terry Brownbill, the council's spokesman, said there had been no point replacing the damaged panes until a solution had been found. The seat's removal had been deemed necessary for health and safety reasons.

A county council spokesman Fenland had taken back the repair and maintenance of the shelters last year.

"Until then we carried out repairs promptly, as part of our agreement with Fenland," said the spokesman.