A PENSIONER'S delight turned to dismay when she found her lovely new flat would have no carpets nor bed because she could not get a second DSS loan to replace her flood-ruined furniture.

Esther Stanton, 70, was over the moon when she was given a flat in sheltered accommodation in Bethesda Close, Blackburn.

She has been living in a council maisonette in Brookway, Blackburn, for four-and-a-half years, and had been allowed a community care loan from the DSS to buy items such as curtains, carpets, and a bed.

But after a drainage pipe in a cistern cupboard burst four times, bringing part of the ceiling down and flooding the hall with water, the furniture she had bought with the loan was ruined.

Esther, who suffers from bronchitis, was even forced to sleep on a settee in her living room.

Now she has been told by the DSS that she cannot have another loan to buy new furniture to take with her to her new flat.

"I reported the burst to the council three months ago," Esther said. "I have been ill with the smell and the damp and my doctor sent a letter to Anchor Housing Authority who arranged the new flat for me.

"It's absolutely beautiful, but I can't take my furniture with me because it smells, it's damp and it's ruined.

"I have a mattress and some old curtains my daughter has lent me but no settee and no carpets.

"I am paying them back for the old loan but I'm told I can't have another."

Her daughter, Christina Houghton, added: "The furniture in the old house is absolutely disgusting. There are mushrooms growing in the bed and black slime all down the walls. She can't live with that furniture in her new flat."

A spokesman for Blackburn Council said: "We have no records of complaints about damp from her but somebody is going out to see her."

A spokesman for the DSS said they could not comment on individual cases but stated: "When a customer makes a second application we compare the details and if the circumstances are the same we cannot issue another loan."

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