CAMPAIGNING pensioners could appeal to the Local Government Ombudsman in a bid to save their resident wardens.

A petition from Weardale is urging Wear Valley District Council to scrap plans to save £144,000 from its housing budget by sacking 22 wardens who watch over residential schemes for the elderly and infirm.

The protestors argue that three mini-centres being set up in Crook, Willington and Bishop Auckland are too far away.

Elizabeth Ellis, 85, from Stanhope, wants the Ombudsman to intervene.

She said: "I am half an hour away from Crook, and there are people further away than me in villages at the top of the dale. We all feel vulnerable. We rely on our wardens."

Protest organiser Margaret Taylor, from Coundon, said: "The resident warden service is more cost-effective. It was dealing with 1,500 people, five days a week, and giving them an excellent standard of service.

"Now, instead of daily checks, they will only be contacted twice a week, with no follow up calls. It presents the possibility of residents lying injured or ill for one or two days.

"The old people need local needs serviced locally, and not from a central site"

District council leader Councillor Olive Brown is confident that any challenge would fail.

She said: "We have done everything legally. We don't want to lose the warden service, but we simply haven't got the money to keep it."