A year-long probe into whether council bosses could have done more to help a pensioner who died in a freezing council flat has been delayed yet again.

Southend Council chief executive George Krawiec has now set up an independent panel of investigators - more than a year after 73-year-old Josef Krasy died.

It comes two weeks after Southend West MP David Amess criticised the council for failing to produce a report of its findings and an admission by council chiefs that the investigation had taken too long.

At the time council spokeswoman Moira Jackson said Mr Krawiec was expecting "a rapid conclusion to the investigation".

But yesterday she admitted they had no idea who would sit on the panel, when it would convene, who exactly it would interview or when it would produce a report.

She added: "We have no more information into the make-up of the panel yet, only that it will meet in private."

She insisted the evidence collected so far would be put before the panel.

Mr Krasy was found dead in his flat at Beaver Tower in Mansel Close, Eastwood, on November 20, 1998.

A post mortem found that he had died of natural causes brought on by heart disease.

But social services bosses at Southend Council came to a different conclusion after an initial investigation, deciding that he had in fact died of hypothermia.

Today his daughter Joanne Polkinghorne described the decision to set up the panel as "ludicrous".

She said: "Why are they prolonging this? I think they must be worried about something. Why are they spending all this money on a panel when they could have spent it helping my father in the first place? I haven't even been contacted by the council on this. I don't know what's going on."

In December she accused the council of failing her father, a former Polish soldier who settled in Britain after the Second World War. She claimed the council knew of his plight but failed to take extra steps to help him out.

Social services bosses said they had visited him but that he refused help, saying his problems were financial.

His death sparked Mr Amess to launch his Warm Homes and Energy Conservation Bill which will require the Government to fit energy efficient measures to eight million homes where the occupants cannot afford to keep warm.

Asked why the council had now decided to change the way they were investigating the case - 14 months after his death - Mike Pressling, assistant director of corporate services, said it was the fairest and most effective way of investigating what happened.

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