By Ashley Young-
The water supply to over 70 flats in Croydon was cut off on Sunday, leaving residents without water for Bank Holiday heatwave of high temperatures.
The appalling situation in one of London’s worst boroughs got so bad, leading residents to raise alarm and complaint bitterly.
One resident told The Eye Of Com: ” the situation in Croydon is so bad, one has to be lost for words that any part of the UK can operate this badly. Residents here might as well be living in a third world country, that’s how bad this has got. To think that we have had no water since Sunday, which couldn’t come at a worst time when there is a heat wave, is unbelievable.
This must be a cursed borough, it doesn’t look like any of the bad publicity in the news about the damps and leaks on Regina road has made any difference. If there was ever anything called special measures, this council needs to be put in special measures to address the problem”.
Sarah Jones, the MP for Croydon Central, and the area’s ward councillors, made multiple attempts to engage with HML, the flats’ managing agents,
When Inside Croydon called HML Group this morning, no one there was able to answer our questions, nor did they know whether the situation for Bridge House residents had been improved.
Residents had also been left with a paucity of information once the water supply was cut off on Sunday
After the managing agents issued each household with just three bottles of water yesterday, some residents received an email from the HML Group around 11pm last night advising them to go on a shopping trip to buy more water and to keep the receipts for reimbursement.
“We cannot leave this for another night,” one angry resident said. “No showers, no toilets, no drinking water.”
This morning, another resident tweeted, “Can the HML Group please update all residents in Bridge House with a truthful when the engineer will be here to fix our water please? Four days of being unable to flush our toilets is disgusting! All we want is some honest communication to all residents.”
The request by the MP for the managing agents to arrange for residents to be moved to a hotel until the issues can be resolved was first greeted with a promise from HML Group. But the managing agents refused to put the offer in writing.
A subsequent message from the company yesterday claimed that an email had been sent before 6pm to “the residents and leaseholders that I have email addresses for…”, something that has been disputed by some residents, “… advising that they can go to a hotel”.
But there was a “but”: the managing agent added, “I also advised that I could not guarantee reimbursement until I spoke to the insurance company.”
One of the ward councillors tweeted, “I’m staggered by the incompetence of HML Group. Leaving residents in this situation is an absolute disgrace.” The company’s attitude was, according to the councillor, “appalling”.
By midnight last night, Jones was threatening to call in the police. “You cannot leave people with no water,” she tweeted.
She branded the company’s inaction as “disgraceful”.
“Ringing your out of hours number has achieved nothing,” Jones posted on Twitter.
“You must move people to hotels when they have no water. The council is delivering some emergency water but you have to move people now they have no toilets. Please act now.”
Lied
Mp Jones this morning issued an open message for advice from housing law specialists, saying, “The managing agents lied on the phone, and have kept residents in fear with little communications and have no list of vulnerable residents, but have they acted illegally?