THIEVES are stripping empty homes bare as cash problems have halted plans to demolish them.

Now residents living nearby fear gangs who have loaded vans with tiles, floorboards and plumbing may now target their homes.

Several streets in west Accrington are to be transformed in the council's Project Phoenix, replacing terrace houses and offices with new homes and a health centre.

But some residents are stuck in their homes after Hyndburn Council hit cash-flow problems - meaning it can not afford to buy them for demolition.

The £25million project affects around 200 homes but only around 50 have been bought by the council so far. Today, those left in limbo revealed how yobs were taking advantage of the delays to strip the houses already vacated.

Mohammed Saeed, 52, who lives in Rutland Street with his wife and teenage daughter, admitted he was too afraid to go out for long in case he returned to find his home raided.

He said: "The situation here is really awful - most of the houses are empty.

"If you go in all these houses now the floor has gone up and all the plumbing like sinks have all been removed.

"It's worse every day, you don't know if you're going to come back and find your roof taken off or your house broken into. We are really fed up."

But Mr Saeed, who has lived in the street for 14 years, said he was nervous of calling the police for fear of reprisals.

Police said they had not received many calls about the problem but Sergeant Bob Eaton, of Accrington Police, added: "I must stress that unless people tell us what is going on, we cannot prioritise our resources towards these areas.

"Where they have told us in the past we have made arrests and sorted problems out."

Julie Scott, 38, has been a tenant in Rutland Street for two years. She said: "Everywhere you look there's things falling down.

"You get a lot of people coming up in vans trying to take things like slates off the roof. I know it's coming down but they could wait until everyone is gone and have a bit of respect for the people. It isn't a nice place to live at the moment."

The Project Phoenix hit problems when the North West Development Agency pulled back from several schemes in the area due to committing more cash than it actually had.

Coun Tony Dobson, portfolio holder for housing on Hyndburn Council, said that about £600,000 of Government money could soon be available to start the project moving again. He said: "We should, almost immediately, be able to continue buying properties and help people relocate."