Pensioner trapped in lift for almost an hour at Rochdale Infirmary

Frank Rawlinson, 83, from Rochdale, was trapped in a broken lift for almost an hour at Rochdale Infirmary as no one on site was authorised to get him out.

Frank, who was visiting the hospital for a routine eye test, got stuck in the lift just before 5.00pm.

He then had to wait 55 minutes for an engineer to travel from North Manchester General Hospital to release him.

Mr Rawlinson, a former bus and ambulance driver, was surprised no one at the hospital could get him out.

Mr Rawlinson suffers from osteoarthritis in his knees and used the lift to take him down one floor as he wanted to avoid using the stairs but despite the short journey, the lift shuddered a halt.

It is understood that Mr Rawlinson spent his time in the lift pacing around as he wanted to avoid sitting down in case he couldn’t get back up again.

John Allwork, head of estate operations at The Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, said: “We have an on-call electrician who responded to this
lift breakdown at Rochdale Infirmary. We are very sorry for the inconvenience and distress caused to Mr Rawlinson and we are looking to see how we can improve our response time in future.”