A DISABLED offender has finally been found a place to live at the 11th hour after council officials answered a judge's request to attend court.

Wheelchair user Anthony Tasker, 34, looked set to be released from Burnley Crown Court with nowhere to go.

But a temporary home in Blackburn was found for him moments before he would have been facing life on the streets.

The court had been told how there was only one suitable property with wheelchair access available in the Blackburn with Darwen area, where the defendant came from, and a check first had to be made with the police's Public Protection Unit.

But just after Judge Beverley Lunt had freed Tasker, who has spent a year on remand in a prison hospital wing, a senior probation officer told the court accommodation would now be offered. Tasker, who had been locked up after threatening to kill a member of the very service which has since made exhaustive efforts to get him out, was given a 12-month community rehabilitation order. He had admitted making a threat to kill.

Judge Lunt said the defendant had now probably served the equivalent of a three-year jail term and any longer would be out of all proportion to the offence, serious though it was.

She said she would have had to let Tasker go free, even if he was homeless, as she simply could not keep a man behind bars because he had nowhere to go.

Judge Lunt had twice ordered housing and social services officials to attend court to explain why a home had not been found for Tasker, but they had not turned up. She had earlier claimed he would be better off if he was an asylum seeker.

Before freeing Tasker yesterday, the judge, who said she found it astonishing there was not a single property in the area suitable for a man with Tasker's disabilities, had again been told nothing suitable was currently available.

David Traynor, counsel for Blackburn with Darwen Council, had said it had made great efforts to try to find Tasker a place. There was nothing it could do at the moment.

Housing needs manager Steve Richards had explained the council had scoured six other areas in East Lancashire, but no other local authority had any accommodation available at all.