Sidmouth pensioner, 72, pledges to move out of seafront flat after being trapped in faulty lift three times in two months

Pensioner Mary Connick says she feels like a prisoner in her own home after having to be rescued by firefighters three times this year from the lift at her Sidmouth flats for the elderly.

Mary, 72, lives on the top floor of St Peters Court just off Sidmouth Esplanade.

She says she was left terrified on all three occasions when the lift stopped and had to be rescued by the fire service twice in March and once in February.

Another elderly resident on the top floor who has heart problems had to be taken down the six flights of stairs by the ambulance service on Sunday 3 April due to further problems with the lift.

Now Mary is so traumatised she can't use the lift – and is looking for somewhere else to live.

She said: "I'm one of the younger residents, I'm quite sprightly. At a push, I can do the stairs.

"People here, most of them are 80 or 90 and they've all got bad health. They're using walking frames and wheelchairs - they can't get out at all.

"People rely on family and neighbours or supermarket deliveries. I take rubbish out for my neighbours.

"[We] are effectively prisoners here."

Response from lift company

On one occasion when Mrs Connick was trapped, she said she was told she would have to wait 30 minutes for engineers to arrive – and so called the fire service instead.

Secretary to the residents management committee Richard Heard said: "The flats are virtual freeholds on 999 year leases, with the residents deciding what they spend their service charge payments on. My role in this unfortunate series of breakdowns of the lift has been as the main point of contact with the lift company Stannah in attempting to ensure they apply every effort to remedy the present unsatisfactory situation."

A spokesperson for Stannah Lifts, the company that provided the lift in question, said: "I can confirm that there have been some reliability issues with the lift … and that we are working with the owner to address the root cause. We apologise to the residents for the disruption.

"We cannot advise on the specifics in this case, but where equipment is under service with Stannah, we may suggest to customers that an upgrade may improve safety or reliability.

"All lifts installed after 1998 should be fitted with an auto dialler emergency telephone which, should someone become entrapped, they can use to call either a nominated customer contact or the service provider's 24/7 manned emergency call out number.

"We always prioritise any calls where there is an entrapment. Industry standard would be to aim to get to all entrapments within an hour but this is not always possible depending on time of day, geographical location, traffic conditions and the proximity and situation of the nearest engineer.

"Clearly they have to make safe whatever they are doing before that can respond to a callout, even an entrapment. 30 minutes would be considered a good response time.

"The engineers are trained and qualified to a minimum of NVQ 3 for passenger lifts and trained in the correct release procedures. The engineer would be dispatched to site armed with this information and training. They would make contact with the entrapped person, reassure them and then assess the situation to ensure it is safe to either move the lift or open the doors to release the trapped passenger safely."

Lift working, but Mrs Connick moving out

When Nub News visited the building earlier this week, the lift was working. Despite this, Mrs Connick said that she would not use it and has decided to move out.

She said: "I'm not going in it. Even if it's fixed, I'm not going in it.

"I took this flat because I wanted to retire here, because it had a lift. I've lived and worked in countries all over the world. My husband was a civil engineer, I'm an English teacher. We've lived in Libya, in Egypt, in Yemen, in Saudi Arabia, in Qatar - I've even lived in Poland … [and] once in a flat above a grocer's shop in Ukraine.

"Nothing has been as bad as this. I can't take this anymore."

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