Why would this woman say she’d be better off having a bath in the middle of her estate than in her flat?
Fifty-three-year-old Kym made the extraordinary claim after hearing a candidate try to explain the benefits of a new environmental heating plan for estates across the borough that have been blighted by heating and hot water outages for years.
The candidate was taking part in a Southwark News debate as part of this paper’s bid to get more people engaged in local politics and raise the turnout in the upcoming local elections on May 5.
The Newington Estate, where Kym lives, will, it is hoped, use water-source heat pumps to heat people’s homes.
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Both the Newington and the Brandon Estate, each home to hundreds of households, have suffered outage after outage to their communal heating systems over the years, with some residents going weeks without heating and hot water.
Southwark Council has pledged to tackle the outages by spending £350 million across the borough to install renewable solutions like heat pumps.
Liberal Democrat Cllr Graham Neale said “it’s a great use of… renewable energy, I don’t think you’re likely to cool the groundwater in the Thames basin.”
“Cor,” Kym said in response, sitting in her ground-floor flat, “I’d be better off having a bath down there than up here!”
Kym was watching the debate with her partner Les, 73. They are just one of four households that the News is showing the debates to, in a Gogglebox-style experiment.
Les explained that they have often had to bathe in just three inches of water because of the problems in their home.
Kym said she had been left with no heating and hot water every year for the past 30 years of living on the estate, and recently went a full month without any hot water.
“They’ve been doing it for years, honestly,” she said. “Every bit of this estate has been taken up at some point… [why doesn’t someone] stand up and say ‘hold up a minute, let’s do this then.”
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Labour’s Newington councillor Alice Macdonald, who is standing for re-election on May 5, said: “I do get really frustrated with this, because it does need a lot of investment and we have committed that.”
“I’m sure you get frustrated, but you’re not showing it,” was Ola’s opinion. The 35-year-old mother of four from the Brandon estate is another one of the four households watching our debates.
Mother-and-daughter Paula, 42, and Kate, 23, also on the Brandon estate, were not impressed either. Kate said: “Outside is warmer than the actual homes.”
Southwark gives residents compensation for days when they have heating and hot water outages for 24 hours. Cllr Macdonald mentioned the £3 daily payment that gets added into residents’ service accounts automatically. Asked whether she thought £3 per day was enough, Ola said: “No.”
But she acknowledged that Cllr Macdonald had fought for people on her estate to be given extra compensation a few years ago. Paula said she had not got any compensation, although she lives on the same estate.
The Lib Dems’ Graham Neale – a council tenant himself – held back from criticising Labour, cautioning that “there’s always going to be problems with those big ticket items, the communal housing systems… 400 homes relying on one system.”
He added that heating systems like that scared him because if there was a problem, “400 people have got your phone number [asking] ‘where’s my heating, where’s my heating.”
Chuckling, Kym said: “I’ve got 500 [notifications] on my phone to say ‘Oh I am sorry that we’ve got no hot water or heating at your address, but we’re doing our very best to get it done.’”
The Greens’ Ms Wood said the new heating schemes were “fantastic”, but added that she wanted “accountability” on how much of the hundreds of millions of pounds being spent will go on upkeep of the heating systems, and also insulation.
Oyster Court leaseholder Neil, 38, our final household watching the recording of the debate, said that accountability is “a good thing, but that lots of people try to evade accountability”.
Kym’s response was more direct: “I think they’re talking a load of sh*t”.