A councillor vowed last night not to be silenced by arsonists who attacked her home.

Vandals tried to burn down Councillor Glynis Abbott's garden fence - two hours after she went on local television to condemn fire raisers who tried to blow up a nearby block of flats.

Her son, Mark had looked out of the bathroom window of the family's home, in Essex Close, Redcar, to see flames and smoke.

Coun Abbott said: "It could have caught the house. The fence is only eight feet from the back window. If we had been out the fire could have taken hold."

As it was, the fire was spotted in time and Mark help his father, Councillor Chris Abbott, leader of the Liberal Democrat group on Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council, to put the fire out with a garden hose.

A jacket had been set alight and placed against the fence, which was only scorched. Coun Mrs Abbott said if the fence fire was a warning following her TV interview, it had failed singularly.

"If the two are connected it makes more even more determined to keep speaking out.

"This area used to be quite nice but now its getting increasingly worse,'' she said.

Blind resident Anthony Green, who lives with his two-year-old son, Billy in Roseberry Road, on the same estate as the Abbotts, lost all his clothes and furniture in two fire attacks within hours on his home at the weekend. One attack involved petrol being poured into the flat.

Cleveland Police said last night forensic scientists were examining evidence recovered at the scene.