A WAILING alarm that sounded for more than six hours on Christmas Day drove residents on Skipton's Burnside Estate to despair.

The fire alarm at derelict Burnside House, the former children's home, activated at 9am and continued for most of the day, despite constant attempts to call owners North Yorkshire County Council and the alarm company Initial Response.

Local resident John Manley, whose home is just 40 yards away, said it sounded like a lorry's reverse warning sound and could be heard with the windows and doors shut.

He said that throughout Christmas dinner the alarm steadily drove them mad. He phoned the county council's property services department based in Ilford, Essex, at 11.30am and then again at 3.30pm.

Eventually peace was restored but just as the residents thought Boxing Day would pass without incident the alarm shattered the silence and sounded again at 10pm continuing until midnight.

Mr Manley said the alarm had gone off about 20 times since the children's home was declared surplus to requirements in 2000 and put up for sale.

He has spent money on phone calls and hours of time trying to get people to switch off the alarm permanently and said residents were paying a lot of money in council tax and getting very little service in return.

He thought the council was "incompetent" and should see its way to compensating the residents for the inconvenience.

Steve Dalton, from Initial Response, said there was a fault with the alarm and it needed to be checked by an engineer from the manufacturers, Protec.

He said that for some reason the alarm was not connected to Initial Response's monitoring system and so he had been relying on calls from members of the public to alert him to the fact that the alarm was sounding.

He added that over the past couple of months residents had contacted Initial Response several times but when engineers have turned out, the alarm sounding was not the one at Burnside House.

Three weeks ago Mr Dalton told the county council that he would not continue to send out engineers to false alarms. In future one would only be sent if the alarm showed on the monitoring system and the council would have to reconnect it.

On Boxing Day evening, an electrician from neighbouring Ashfield Residential Home was eventually called out to deactivate the alarm.

Mr Dalton said currently the fire alarm was not activated and it was up to the council to decide whether to reconnect it.

He said officers were considering disabling the internal sirens so that if there was a fire the alarm would show on Initial Response's monitoring system but it would not sound in the building.

County Councillor for Skipton Mike Doyle said he had also been trying to sort out the problem, and added that had the county council done more to fill the property instead of leaving it empty this might not have occurred.

A spokesman for North Yorkshire County Council said: "We apologise to people in the immediate area who have had all kinds of problems with this alarm sounding. I know it's of no great comfort to them but we are aware of the problem and are working on the problems as they have developed."

He added that damp had set into the building and that was affecting the alarm's sensors. However, he said that the council was looking at alternative ways to monitor the building with Initial Response and that protecting the building was the council's priority."