A furious Streatham pensioner who claims she was told by Lambeth Council it would take six months to fix her fence has had the work done early, thanks to pressure from the Streatham Guardian.

Rosina Price, 67, from Wellfield Road, said she was given the run around by council officers after she first reported the broken fence in April.

This was despite her telling them her boxer dog could run through the hole in a wire fence and was terrifying her neighbour, another council tenant.

She contacted her Streatham Wells ward councillor Julian Heather and the Streatham Guardian to say how angry she was that nothing was being done.

But to both her and Coun Heather's shock, they were told work could not start until October at the earliest.

But after we contacted the council last week, Mrs Price was told work would be completed on Tuesday.

She said: "The council just didn't do anything after they came and assessed the problem. I told them if my dogs got out into the road through the fence they could cause an accident and I would be liable but I don't suppose the council cared about that."

Mrs Price, who has lived in the house for 30 years, said she has never asked the council for any help with the house before as her husband, who died 15 months ago, did all the repairs.

She said she was delighted to have the fence fixed but she felt the council put looking after council estates ahead of people in council houses.

"We see them going into the estates the whole time but we have to hound them to get anything done," she added.

Coun Heather said the reason the work was taking so long was because of a wider problem where non-essential jobs were "banked" on a council database but never picked up by maintenance teams and forgotten.

A Lambeth Council spokeswoman said; "Response to repair requests are logged and dealt with on a priority basis with jobs such as blocked drains and loss of electricity considered as urgencies."