A PENSIONER has said it took her 90 minutes to walk downstairs at a tower block after unreliable lifts broke down.

Mo Simmons, 82, has lived in Millbrook Towers for 40 years and has “never known it to be as bad as it is now”, with the two lifts inside the tower block breaking down intermittently, leaving her stranded.

Mrs Simmons called the lift outages “a blatant disregard for tenant safety”.

READ MORE: Millbrook Towers lifts break, leaving woman stuck inside

As reported, they stopped working last Friday - with one operational by Tuesday.

She said: "Having to walk down 20 flights of stairs is potentially dangerous at my age.

“It took me an hour and a half to walk to the bottom of the building on Monday and you had no choice but to wait at the bottom and practically sit on the floor and hope the lift gets sorted to get back up.

“It’s totally unacceptable – I used to be block rep but I’m doing more work now than I was then."

The lifts have repeatedly been out of order - with many saying it was a nightmare situation.

A Southampton City Council spokesperson said: “When lifts in our blocks are reported as out of service, we attend as soon as possible to reduce inconvenience and provide a safe and reliable facility to all residents.

“We have recently experienced technical issues with the lifts at Millbrook Towers and our engineers have been on site this week carrying out the necessary repairs and checks.

“Both lifts are now operational, and we’d like to thank residents for their patience and apologise for the disruption.” 

The Echo previously revealed the city council forked out £1.4 million on replacing lifts at Albion, Redbridge and Shirley Towers between January 2021 and March 2023.
Some £9,470 was spent on repairing broken lifts in 2022.

The outages have seen people argue over who gets priority on using them.

The council said it has spent more than £100,000 on maintaining lifts at council-owned blocked up to April this year.

This includes £11,000 at Dumbleton Towers and Millbrook Towers.