IMAGINE the anguish of terminally-ill cancer victim, pensioner Dennis Marsden, unable to walk and trapped in his high-rise council flat.

His answer to his plight was to buy a powered disabled scooter so that he did not spend his last days housebound.

But two obstacles stood in 71-year-old Dennis's way.

One was a wooden step at the entrance to his flat at Larkhill, Blackburn.

The other was the town hall.

It's just a three-hour job to lower the step. But a much longer one to get the dawdling council to come and do it.

Time and again, a desperate Dennis rang the town hall. But the council's promises of action came to naught.

Despairing, he turned to the Lancashire Evening Telegraph.

Now, it's sorted.

The problem? One council department was waiting to hear from another.

We are glad to have cut through the red tape and helped Dennis out. That's our job as a community newspaper.

But, for goodness sake, why couldn't the council get it right in the first place?

A case lying in someone's in-tray is not just a piece of paper, but a person in need of help.

And, surely, a sick and worried person stuck in a tower-block flat is an urgent case.

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