RESIDENTS in Oswaldtwistle flats will have to put up with their creaking floorboards and banging doors because the council has no cash for sound proofing.

Eleven households in Thwaites Road petitioned Hyndburn Council for insulation to reduce noise between the upper and ground floor flats.

But the council does not have enough money to sound insulate all flats where there is a problem and residents will have to live with the noise between floors for at least a year.

Oswaldtwistle councillor Peter Britcliffe said the problem was quite dreadful. He was concerned it was going to shatter the nerves of people living there.

He told the housing committee that an elderly lady moving about upstairs just doing her ironing caused so much disturbance and noise people below could not sit and watch television. Noise caused arguments with neighbours falling out and not speaking to one another, not realising it was an insulation problem, he added.

He said the problem was exacerbated because some residents had bought their properties and some arrangement would have to be made as noise insulation affected two flats, one above and one below.

A pilot scheme already approved to insulate floors at Huncoat is likely to cost £1,621 per flat and the bill at Thwaites Road would be similar, councillors were told.

The committee agreed that the Oswaldtwistle scheme be included in a draft repairs programme for 1999/2000 if the Huncoat pilot is successful.

Coun Britcliffe said so little money was coming into Hyndburn that this problem was just the tip of a very large iceberg.

That brought an angry response from Labour leader George Slynn who said the council had been forced to stand and stare at this type of improvement because it had been starved of cash by the Tory government.

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