A WOMAN died after she lit 17 candles for a romantic meeting with her imaginary boyfriend and accidentally set her flat on fire, an inquest heard this week.

Jane Ellis, from Sandhurst, had long harboured a make-believe relationship with a man she called "Ian" and had laid out candles for a romantic day with him on Saturday, February 7 last year but instead set her first floor flat on fire, ignoring warnings from desperate neighbours outside.

Senior coroner Peter Bedford heard on Tuesday that Ms Ellis' family and friends repeatedly pleaded with mental health and NHS services to have her sectioned shortly before fire engulfed her first floor flat in Oxford Road.

Neighbours had knocked on the door of the 46-year-old's flat to warn her of the fire only for Ms Ellis to slam the door shut and ignore their warnings.

After being found in the bathroom, she was airlifted to St George's hospital in Tooting and put into an induced coma but died on February 8 last year.

Her family criticised a crisis mental health care team for leaving Ms Ellis alone in the flat shortly before the blaze.

Her brother-in-law, Andrew Manley, told the coroner: "In my opinion, this was an entirely preventable incident, had Jane been put in a safe place and adequately monitored until she became well.

"We were extremely concerned with Jane's behaviour. It was clearly delusional and putting her at risk.

"Around 5pm, we found out from relatives that the crisis team had left Jane on her own. We were shocked that they had not sectioned her."

Ms Ellis had been behaving erratically before the tragic fire, telling a friend who was picking her up for a trip to Bristol that she was "waiting for Ian" and only agreed to visit her GP after being convinced Ian was waiting for her there.

Despite her GP Dr Deepak Goyal from Sandhurst Group Practice saying Ms Ellis should be sectioned, police who were called to the scene said it would be difficult as she didn't appear to be in danger of immediate harm to herself.

Dr Goyal told the inquest he felt strongly that Ms Ellis needed to be sectioned after she manically hugged him and had "excessive make-up all over her face".

He said he felt helpless as he made some 20 calls trying to get mental health services to take a referral for her and said: "I feel very let down by my colleagues at the mental health team in the way they assessed the patient."

Her aunt Caroline and her husband John Parker stayed with Ms Ellis at her flat while she was interviewed by a crisis team shortly before the blaze, but they were told to go home and were reassured she was being treated by experts.

Mrs Parker added Ms Ellis might have slammed her door on neighbours as she did not want to admit knocking over a candle because "she wanted to please all the time".

The coroner said a post mortem examination showed that Ms Ellis' cause of death was a hypoxic brain injury as a direct consequence of the fire.

The inquest continues.