A pensioner left living in the dark for six months has said it is ‘outrageous’ that delays mean the scaffolding that blocks her daylight won’t be removed until the end of November.

Pat Phillips and other residents of council-owned bungalows on Stratfield Road have been living beneath the scaffolding since Slough Borough Council put it up in May.

The council said on October 14 that while roofing repairs had been completed, the time needed to connect planned solar panels to the electricity grid meant the scaffolding wouldn’t be removed until November.

But now it has been discovered that an application to connect the panels to the grid was only submitted to the local energy network on October 17 – two days after Pat’s story appeared in the Slough Observer.

READ MORE: Elderly and disabled people's daylight blocked for six months by council

Pat said: “That’s outrageous. I can’t understand why they have left everything up without a word of explanation for weeks and weeks on end.”

Slough Brough Council initially planned to keep the scaffolding in place for 12-14 weeks while roofs were replaced in May. But it then decided in August to keep it in place so that solar panels could also be installed.

The scaffolding has left some homes with almost no daylight – with rooms in darkness at the height of the afternoon.

In its initial statement on October 14, the council said there had been a delay in installing the panels ‘due to the time required for approval’ from the company that manages the local electricity grid, SSEN.

SSEN has since confirmed it only received an application to connect to the grid on October 17.

It added: "This process does not affect the installation of the solar panels, and SSEN does not require any scaffolding to remain in place while the application progresses."

DPat Phillips questions why the scaffolding has been up for so long (Image: Mike Swift) In a new statement Slough Borough Council said its 'preference' is to install and connect the solar panels at the same time.

It says its contractor Cardo began collecting residents’ meter point administration numbers – which are needed to connect the panels to the grid – during initial surveys in July.

The council says the numbers took ten weeks to collect, and were passed to a third party energy supplier at the beginning of October. That company in turn passed the numbers to SSEN on October 17 after ‘a small delay on their end’.

The council said: “The plan is to proceed and install the solar panels on November 11, though we are seeing if this can be brought forward.

“As the installation progresses, the scaffold will be removed on a rolling basis for each section complete. We still anticipate removing the full scaffold by the end of November, if not before.”

Pat said that despite the delay, it ‘would be fantastic to get rid of this scaffolding’ in November. But she added she would like the council to restore her garden, which has died due to a lack of sunlight.

The council said it would ‘look to help make good any issues caused by the scaffold’.