A Bermondsey man has told of his “disgust” after being advised by a council officer to “put towels down” and call back the next day, as water came pouring through his ceiling when a pipe in his upstairs neighbour’s flat sprang a leak.
Gary Joseph, who lives on Amina Way on the Rouel Road estate, said he found the response of the emergency 24-hour repairs team “shocking”.
“The poor woman upstairs, I felt so sorry for her,” he added. “She was all on her own and she’s got water everywhere. It was coming through my flat too. [The council officer] went ‘just put towels down’ and I said ‘but it’s an emergency!’”
The incident took place on the night of May 10 at about 10.30pm. Joseph said that after he called the emergency number, he and the woman in the upstairs flat were up all night mopping up.
“It’s disgusting, they just left us to fend for ourselves,” he added. “I just don’t get it, I really don’t.” Joseph, who said he helped build the estate as a young man, told the News that he was forced to cut a small hole in his ceiling to divert water away from his chandelier.
He called his housing officer the next day, but was unable to get through on more than one occasion. “We got nothing back,” Joseph said. “I could get hold of a Nasa engineer easier than getting hold of my housing officer.”
A council engineer was eventually sent out to fix the leak the next evening. Joseph said he did “a great job”.
“I know things break, I understand all that,” he added. “Nothing lasts forever. I accept that. But when I phoned up the out of hours emergency number, the guy’s attitude just stank. It really did. It seemed like I was bothering him.”
“[My neighbour] was up all night, I was up all night. I’ve got towels everywhere. I was wringing towels out every five minutes. My arm is killing me from wringing these towels out. I’m 64, I’m a carer as well for my disabled partner.”
Cllr Stephanie Cryan, Cabinet Member for Council Housing, said: “We regret that this repair wasn’t seen to sooner and have spoken to Mr Joseph to apologise and to make appropriate recompense.
“We are reimbursing Mr Joseph for the cost of replacing his towels and completing repairs, including the living room ceiling. We will paint the affected area when it is dry.”
This latest incident comes after a long-running series of problems with heating and hot water on the Rouel Road estate, with the new communal district heating system appearing to cause frequent outages since late last year.