An 83-year-old man with severe mobility issues is furious because the council has taken five weeks to fix his garage – and fined him £100 for parking on the street outside in the meantime.

Vittorio Tempesta, who has a damaged spine, needs to park close to his Centurion Close council flat, off Caledonian Road, so he can easily transport his shopping.

But after five weeks of complaining to Islington’s repairs team, nothing has been done.

The former butcher and chef asked the Gazette on Tuesday: “Oh my god, what can I do? They don’t want to know.”

Adding to his fury, Mr Tempesta was given a £100 fine at the end of last month when he parked his Fiat in a non-disabled bay outside his flat.

He explained: “I took my car out of the garage five weeks ago and ‘BOOM’. The cable bust and the garage door won’t stay open. I can’t keep it open by myself, and I can’t exactly ask everyone passing by to hold it open every time I want to get my car out.

“The council says to me: ‘We contact you.’ After two weeks, a woman comes and takes a picture of the garage. But this is now the fifth week and no one has contacted me.

“It’s hard to walk. My spine is very bad. I have blood pressure problems. A bad shoulder. Pain in my right leg. Heart complications. I need to park in my garage because I can’t carry my shopping long distances.”

Mr Tempesta, who has previously featured in the Gazette’s pages calling out the criminal gangs that target Pentonville Prison across the road, continued: “A lot of the time, there are no spaces in the parking bays on my road, so I have to park in Caledonian Road or Roman Way.

“I don’t buy one bottle of wine, I buy three or four boxes of wine from the warehouse as it’s cheaper. With my health problems, I can’t carry all this stuff.

“I have been in this flat 25 years, and still no one from the council helps me.”

An Islington Council spokesman said: “We’d like to thank our tenant for reporting this broken garage door. Our garage door specialist will be in contact with him this week to arrange a repair.

“A penalty charge notice was issued because the car was parked partly obstructing another garage. Mr Tempesta is welcome to appeal and we have contacted him to explain how he can do this.”