A 91-YEAR-OLD council tenant who is regularly forced to climb seven flights of stairs to get home claims it will take a tragedy before something is done about a faulty intercom and broken lifts.

Mrs Lynette Holden, above, who is known locally as Lenny, says she is fed-up living on the seventh floor at Pendle House, Larkhill, because of on-going maintenance problems.

She said: "The intercom is hardly ever working. They come to fix it but hours later it is broken again which makes me think they are not doing a proper job. If someone comes to visit me I have to go down seven flights of stairs to let them in and then seven flights back again. When the lifts are working it is a Godsend, a real help to me, but recently both of them were out of order and it really was terrible, like being a prisoner in my own flat. "District nurses come to see me regularly and they can't get in. I just don't know what would happen if something happened to me and I needed help. I think the council are waiting for something tragic to happen before they do anything."

Mrs Holden has lived happily in the flat for more than 33 years but has become increasingly concerned about their upkeep in the last 12 months.

"I've always loved living here but the last year has been terrible. It wouldn't be so bad if all the tenants were old folk but they're not and it does cause problems.

She went on: "Something really does need to be done."

A spokesman for Blackburn with Darwen Council agreed that the intercom system had proved problematic in the past and been replaced three weeks ago while the lifts at Pendle House have been subject to vandalism, but that it would be "unusual" for both lifts to be broken at the same time.

"There have been teething problems with the new system and this has resulted in some continued disruption. We now feel that the problems are resolved and service should improve."

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