The arrangement with Maintenance and Property Care was branded "disastrous" by SNP councillors last week.

MPC has a 10-year contract which includes maintenance of 48,000 council homes in North Lanarkshire.

However, problems with a new system of allocating work led recently to a backlog of 1,600 jobs, then a computer mistake allegedly led to the company billing North Lanarkshire Council for £300,000 for fencing work it hadn't carried out.

At a meeting of the council's housing committee the SNP group tabled a motion calling for the council to end its partnership with MPC.

However, this was withdrawn when the majority Labour group agreed to have a report prepared on the options available to the council.

SNP group leader Councillor Richard Lyle said MPC's decision last autumn to make 57 workers redundant and allocate jobs via hand-held computers had been a mistake.

He said: "Many jobs are still not being completed and the council must now take the bull by the horns and extract itself from this disastrous arrangement.

"MPC have shown they are not up to the job. We support the workers in their attempts to to come to terms with the new system, but we believe that system is simply unworkable."

Around 600 people are employed by MPC, a company in which the council is a shareholder. It was the first public-private partnership in Scotland and was set up following the demise of the council's own direct labour organisation which lost millions of pounds.

Councillor Lyle added: "Unfortunately, we can't go back to having a DLO, but urgent steps must be taken to remedy this unsatisfactory situation. The MPC workers are being treated abysmally."