A PENSIONER struggled up nine flights of stairs leaving her blind husband on the pavement outside the Wycombe Swan theatre after the council shut the lifts to the car park 15 minutes before the end of a show.

The woman in her 60s had been watching an extended jazz show on February 14, ending at 11.30pm 15 minutes after the normal closing time of the lifts and became frantic when she realised they had been shut down.

She approached a Midweek reader, who had also been at the show at the theatre in St Mary Street, High Wycombe, who escorted her up the stairs to her car.

The 72-year-old reader, a resident of Walters Ash, High Wycombe, who asked not to be named, said: "I'm so cross about it. You'd think that the Swan would have told whoever shuts the lifts not to because it was an extended programme. Being parked high up we'd have had to queue to get out, so we decided to leave it until the last minute. This poor lady said 'Can I come up with you? I'm so frightened and I'm right up on the ninth floor'.

"She was very nervous about walking up the stairs on her own. It's not very nice for a lady on her own going up there. She said she'd left her partner, who is blind, on the pavement on the roadside."

A spokesman for the Wycombe Swan said: "We do supply information to the council and whether they act on it is entirely their decision. If they don't there's not much we can do about it."

A spokesman for Wycombe District Council said: "Normally the times that are programmed are sufficient. We can accommodate later times if we are requested."