Residents from sheltered housing schemes across Swindon were disappointed the no-one from the council went to a public meeting held to discuss the issue.

Cabinet member for housing Cathy Martyn did not respond to her invitation and director of housing Mike Ash said in a statement he did not feel he needed to attend as people had the chance to feedback in October.

Tenants said they felt they weren't being heard and that their concerns were being ignored.

They also gave shocking accounts of upsetting and difficult circumstances they had to deal with when the warden is not on site as the new system has reduced the hours of wardens at each scheme.

ACORN secretary Kate Linnegar who is working with residents said: ‘They don’t know where to turn. They want to help neighbours, of course, but are concerned that they aren’t trained to deal with these situations.

“They are not carers but increasingly find themselves caring for neighbours. In some cases, residents in their 80’s are lifting other residents who have fallen. These are upsetting circumstances and are more difficult when no warden is on site. We will send the feedback from the meeting to Cathy Martyn and Mike Ash.”

A Swindon Borough Council spokesman said: “Every single one of our sheltered housing tenants has had the chance to give us feedback on the review of the service and we greatly value their views.

“We recently carried out a second extensive consultation with tenants and we’ve held numerous meetings at the various sheltered schemes and provided the opportunity for face-to-face conversations with tenants and their family members. The results from the consultation will be presented to Cabinet next week.

“Unfortunately, the pandemic has had a significant impact on our engagement with tenants as our public health colleagues have advised us to keep indoor meetings to a relatively small number of people, for obvious reasons.

"But we have been happy to hold as many meetings as tenants required. COVID-19 restrictions have also affected our TASH meetings as we need to take into the account the wellbeing of our tenants. We have though been working with representatives of TASH to organise a meeting at the earliest opportunity."

The decision about the future of how many hours the wardens will be on site, will be made by Cabinet on 1st December at the Civic Offices at 6pm.