AN ELDERLY woman went without heating in her home for nearly three weeks after engineers failed to fix her boiler.

Council tenant Hendrika Radburn, 79, of Southfield Road, Princes Risborough, woke up on New Year's Eve and found her heating was not working.

She contacted Wycombe District Council about the problem and was told that someone would be out that same day.

But an engineer failed to arrive, leaving Mrs Radburn to spend the last day of the year freezing in her home.

"She spent New Year's Eve on the kitchen floor next to a heater with the gas rings turned on," said daughter-in-law Rachel.

An engineer came the next day to fix the system but it broke again an hour later.

Since then, Mrs Radburn has made numerous phone calls to the council's contractors.

She said engineers called to fix the problem but had failed to come to her house when they said they would.

"I'm just freezing," Mrs Radburn said. "I've been without food as I've had to stay in to wait for engineers. But no one does a proper job."

An engineer called round on last Thursday, and partially fixed the boiler, giving Mrs Radburn heat in the kitchen and the bedrooms upstairs. But the pensioner remained without heating in her lounge and bathroom for a further five days until it was finally fixed on Wednesday.

The district council had told Mrs Radburn that she would have full heating by the day before, but an engineer once again failed to turn up.

A council spokesman said Mrs Radburn did the correct thing in contacting the heating contractor directly on discovering a fault.

"We can only apologise for the delay in fixing the boiler and for any inconvenience and discomfort this may have caused her."

He added: "We have agreed procedures with our contractors that they should follow when responding to such emergencies and we will investigate this incident further."

Contractors, N W Heating Maintenance, refused to comment.