RESIDENTS living in Brooke House have labelled the council block “a disgrace” and “an absolute joke”.

The tower block, in the Town Square, has been in the spotlight recently because of the broken lifts and now council bosses are refusing to go to Brooke House to discuss the lift problems after officers were abused by residents.

Now, residents have hit back at the council saying they feel they have been forgotten and the council needs to sort out their priorities as they are living in “a dump”.

One unhappy dweller is 19-year-old Josie Cook. She lives on the 7th floor with her one-year-old daughter Darcie-May Thompson and has to carry her pushchair and her daughter up and down flights of stairs to get in and out of the building.

“This place is absolutely terrible and all I want to do is leave. I have been here for eighteen months and that is much longer than I should have been. I wanted to be here a year and as I have got Darcie-May I would have thought I would be on a lower floor. The council just don’t care about our needs as I thought we would have been moved out by now.”

Miss Cook says the conditions in the tower block are an absolute state and says she has come across human excrement and drug users in the hallways and stairwells.

“I have to go past all sorts and don’t particularly wan’t people offering me drugs whilst I am with my baby. There is p*** and s*** in the corridors and I cannot stand it.”

A 28-year-old woman, who didn’t want to be named, said she had lived in Brooke House for 6 years with her husband and said she didn’t like it but had grown to accept what it was.

“Everyone knows what happens here. We can’t use the stairwells and the lift situation is a joke. I would happily go and meet with the council to tell them what I think of this place but nothing will be done. No-one wants to be here.”

The work on the first lift, which began this week, is expected to last 16 weeks before work on the second lift starts in February, also lasting 16 weeks.