CASH-STRAPPED Southampton City Council paid outside consultants £37,000 for just 40 hours work to investigate the future of a threatened nursing home.

And from the outside consultants report social services chiefs concluded the best option for Northlands House was to knock it down and build another home on the same site.

Opposition councillors are furious that the consultants did not even consider in the report the option of retaining the building and doing it up. Southampton council is facing a predicted £22 million overspend on building and running costs in the coming financial year.

It is being forced into major redundancies, close leisure facilities and cut grants.

Liberal Democrat councillor Virginia Moore said: ''We were hoping for a host of ideas to come through from the report especially as we were paying £37,000 for it but we were only given one option. I feel that £37,000 was expensive for what we got.''

Now campaigners fighting to save the home from the bulldozers have been thrown a lifeline.

Opposition members voted at a full council meeting yesterday for more options to be explored at Northlands in Banister Park- including retaining the Victorian building and refurbishing it so elderly residents could stay put.

Social services bosses had wanted to enter into a private finance partnership and build a new 60 bed nursing home on the site.

The new home would be offered to a private company on a lease and at the end of the terms the building would revert back to council ownership.

But Liberal Democrat and Tory councillors are battling to save the home. They claim they have not been given all the information necessary to make such a crucial decision and want officers to go away and look at the options again.

Labour Social Services Executive member Councillor Jaqui Rayment urged members not to delay the process any longer and said it was unfair on residents and staff.

Tory councillor Conor Burns said if Northlands House was demolished it would amount to "civic vandalism."

"It is one of the last remaining examples of that type of Victorian building in the city.

"I have had calls from a lady whose elderly husband is cared for at Northlands and she has rung me in tears because she does not know what is going to happen to him," he said.

Officers will now explore not for profit trust status, public/private partnership, a new building on a different site and surplus land sales at Northlands to secure its future - as well as continuing to consult on the proposed closure and re-build plans.