Council flats so ‘appalling one outdated girl escapes to Wetherspoons all day’

Residents of a council flat block are crying out for help. A leaseholder in Pitcairn House in Hackney, east London has slammed the building’s “appalling” conditions which she claims are now in an “emergency” situation.

The situation has become so bad over the course of a decade that Zoe Goodman, who lives on the fifth floor, feels “intentionally neglected” as leaks and fly-tipping continues.

Most who call the nine-storey building in St Thomas’ Square, are council tenants who say their complaints about the 61-year-old building have gone unanswered.

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Zoe said: “Loads of flats have had their fire alarms decommissioned because of previous or current leaks. We also have leaks in the stairwell, which is our only fire escape, making them slippery and wet. It’s really dangerous.”

Hackney Council said that while leaks have been affecting people’s homes, these “will not have impacted the overall structure of the building”.

The authority added that all housing blocks are “regularly inspected”, but anyone with concerns about fire escapes should contact the council immediately. Among a litany of other problems, Zoe claims that the lifts in the block regularly break, leaving some people stranded for long periods.

She said: “One old lady who lives on the eighth floor goes and sits in the Wetherspoons nearby and waits for somebody to try and fix it. She can’t go shopping for days. The council have now said they will refurbish the lifts within 2025. But this is an emergency, it’s not a luxury.”

Despite the issues that plague both private and communal areas of the block, residents say the service charge from the council has continued to rise.

Feyzi Ismail, a leaseholder who lives with her young child on the second floor, claimed: “The council said that the service charge is so high because our block has so many repairs.

“So, the worse your block is, and the less the council has invested in basic stuff, the more your service charge is, essentially.”

Hackney Council acknowledged that service charges in the borough had gone up due to the increased cost of work, and urged anyone with concerns about the costs to contact its homeownership service team.

Zoe said that when repairs are carried out, they are “really shoddy”, with many suffering from a leak that “just comes back again and again”.

She added: “They’re doing the absolute bare minimum, leaving people’s flats often in absolutely appalling conditions.”

Those living at Pitcairn House claim they were promised a block-wide survey by the council, so problems could be investigated and resolved.

But the authority has yet to provide a date for when this might start, they added.

Hackney Council have assured that Pitcairn House would be “one of the first blocks” to be looked at as part of a borough-wide survey programme, due to start “shortly”.

Steve Waddington, strategic director of housing at Hackney Council, said: “I can promise…[the residents of Pitcairn House] that we take their concerns extremely seriously, but while I fully acknowledge there are issues needing to be addressed, the block is a safe place to live.

“I would also urge anyone with any questions or concerns to contact our dedicated contact centre on 0208 356 3691 so we can investigate and seek to resolve them as soon as possible.”

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