COUNCIL bosses have seized the home of a 98-year-old “neighbour from hell” after she was admitted to hospital due to ill health.

Mary Plaisted refused to budge despite a judge ordering her to quit her sheltered housing flat last year.

Southampton City Council were preparing to send in the bailiffs to evict her. But Mrs Plaisted’s deteriorating health saved council chiefs from an unsightly confrontation.

The council plans to move Mrs Plaisted into a residential home when she is released from hospital.

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Neighbours who suffered a decade of torment from her relentless antisocial behaviour had for years pleaded with the council to act.

One elderly resident said: “We are relieved to have our lives back. We are very sorry that it had to end like this with a lot of ill feeling.”

A judge found Mrs Plaisted breached the terms of the tenancy at her £65 a week flat in Lordshill, in which she has lived in for the past 28 years.

She assaulted carers and council staff, harassed neighbours at all hours by banging on their doors and windows shouting for help, endangered the lives of others by using her community alarm 563 times in one month, and made 264 calls to police in two years.

Her telephone and emergency call button were both cut off because of her unnecessary calls.

Ward councillor Don Thomas said the council had been “stuck between a rock and a hard place”.

He said: “I have been working closely with the residents, who let’s not forget are elderly themselves and have been long-suffering and exceptionally tolerant. Living in sheltered accommodation you don’t expect anguish, and distress on a daily basis, which sadly this lady has created.”

Mrs Plaisted insisted she was an innocent victim and had nowhere to go. She denied attacking anybody and claimed she only asked for help when she needed it Nick Cross, the council’s head of housing management, said the authority regretted repossessing any property but was left with “no alternative when antisocial behaviour by one tenant cannot be resolved and it continues to make the lives of other residents unpleasant, even a misery”.

He added: “This has been a particularly difficult case and the council has worked in a compassionate manner to ensure that the lady has been provided with every opportunity to move into new accommodation.”