SCORES of households were left with blank television screens over the Christmas break when a neighbour went on holiday - and turned off the aerial switch.

The plug was pulled on the communal aerial on Boxing Day and residents are still waiting for normal service to be resumed.

And people living in Scotland Bank Terrace, Blackburn, are also furious because they claim it took days for the company to put them in the picture about the problem.

Pensioner Alice Phillips and her husband Kenneth, both 80, discovered there was a problem when they settled down to watch television on Boxing Day.

Mrs Phillips said: "We have to have a shared aerial because we cannot get a signal from Winter Hill here.

"We have had lots of problems with the picture. I had to ring the company eight times before we got an answer about what had gone wrong." She added: "It seems that some woman has gone off on holiday and turned the power off to the shared aerial and that has affected the whole street. They won't even tell me which house she lives at because if I knew I would go round there and sort the situation out myself."

Mrs Phillips says the latest hiccup is the latest in a long line of problems and the council should spend money on a new system.

She said: "We pay each week for the communal aerial and we get problems like this all the time.

"It is ridiculous to think hundreds of people can be left without television over Christmas because one woman decides to go off on her holidays."

A spokesman for Blick Telefusion, the company which runs the contract for Blackburn with Darwen Council, said: "We supply receivers and communal aerials and the council supply the power for the system.

"It appears the power comes from one house and the woman who lives there has gone off on holiday and turned the system off.

"Basically we are up the creek until we can get into the house.

"At the moment we are trying to contact relatives to see if we can track her down."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.