BURNLEY Council has been accused of making "a dreadful error" by sending a court summons for non-payment of council tax to an 81-year-old woman who left the town nearly two years ago.

The demand to Emily Davies for payment and order to appear in court next week relates to a house in Clough Street which was sold 18 months ago.

Her son, newspaper editor, Stephen Davies, 47, of Gosport, Hants, said the council's explanation, that they had not been told of the property sale, was "pure bumbledum."

He added: "I am flaming mad. I find it disgusting that something like this could happen." Mr Davies, an "old boy" of Burnley Grammar School and now editor of the Basingstoke Observer, said his mother, a former primary school teacher in London, who now suffered from dementia had retired to her home town but left Burnley shortly before Christmas, 1999.

She now lived in a care home near to him and that her house in Clough Street, off Accrington Road, was sold in March last year for a mere £2,000.

When he visited Burnley to sell the house he was so disgusted and angry at the deterioration of the area where his mum had lived among boarded up houses that he spoke to the Mayor, housing chairman and a senior housing officer.

The property had been broken into a number of times. On one occasion a water pipe was broken flooding the house.

Last year he had received two or three council tax bills from the council showing a nil amount to pay.

He said: "I thought they were silly sending out bills for nothing."

Now his mum has received one for £496.20, which included £35 costs and a summons for his mother to appear in court on October 4 for non payment.

He said: "She has never owed a penny in her life."

Burnley's director of finance Nick Aves said he could not trace that the council was ever notified at the time of the sale of the property. There then followed a period of exemption because the property was empty, after which a proportion of the council tax again became payable.

Mr Aves said that now they had a date of sale the invoice would be removed and the summons not acted upon.

He added: "I am sorry if Mr Davies felt the system had let him down."