WHAT DO YOU THINK OF MY FAMILY'S SITUATION?
The summary of the issues I made for a third party to forward to the Local Authority, the HHSRS, on my family behalf:
First of all, the problems with our newly built property malfunctioning amenities and our kitchen (set up in our open living area) are still unresolved, despite two years and three months of complaint.
Our case is shifted from one HA representative to another - who have no clue how House is set up, maintained and run; no clue what our property looks like since they never entered it. Nonetheless, they imply that they carried and completed the investigation of our complaint. Stage 2 complaint response ref . For instance, the fact that they are suggesting our boiler room and ventilation system problems have to be dealt with by their property maintenance contractors demonstrates a lack of knowledge of House. Their property maintenance contractors are responsible for House's communal boiler plant and ventilation system, but not for each property's private boiler/storage room and ventilation system. Furthermore, as part of our complaint, the investigator should have referred the repairs to the right departments to resolved our complaint. Finally, during a November 2015 visit with the developers' surveyor and an HA representative, the agreement was that the alteration works in our kitchen were only suggestions needed to be approved by the contractors, who were employed by the developers to deal with defect repairs before the alterations begin. It was agreed that the surveyor would return with the contractors and an HA representative to reach a final agreement with us before the work starts. I have this in writing alongside all the previous allegations. The visit never happened. Therefore, our landlord never tried to resolve the issue of our kitchen. Instead, our landlord ordered the suggestive alterations to be carried out without knowing if it was possible to be done.
From December 2016, our landlord sent contractors twice into our property to carry out repairs to our kitchen area. They did so without primarily sending in a surveyor. According to the contractors' web page, this company does not deal with 'major' repairs but cosmetic repairs. During the last visit, they sent us a handyman (not a surveyor) alongside their executive assistant and an HA representative with no knowledge of Health and Safety Standards and regulations. They suggested permanently moving our fridge-freezer into our dining area and fit our cooker in its place, instead - close to a corner partition wall and with our kitchen fire door opening onto it. With regards to rerouting the existing electric switches, they had no idea if the work they proposed would be achievable, since they came with no voltage, stud and metal detectors, but decided to go ahead with the work regardless. For health and safety reason I could not permit the work to start. I am aware that kitchen fitted within an open living area have to abide by strict regulations. Plus, I have an under five years old living in the property. I knew my landlord would try to hustle my family in agreeing with substandard alterations to quickly resolved our complaint so I recorded the entire duration of the visit held in January 2017 and I brought in a qualified and experienced carpenter as my witness.
Since then. I have spoken to several professional, who are adamant our kitchen in our open living area is a fire risk hazard:
- Our kitchen fire door opens inwards and onto our fridge freezer (where our landlord wanted our cooker fitted).
- Our kitchen fire door opens inwards and not outwards preventing an easy emergency exit from the open living area kitchen.
- Our electric switches on each side of our cooker top are too close and at risk of heat and water damages.
- Access to the only kitchen electric sockets (toaster, etc.), and switches, on top of our worktop, consist on leaning over our cooker top (risk of burns from cooker top and oven) and sink drainer.
- There is not worktop surface to rest food from the oven/cooker top.
Other issues in our kitchen area that causes risk hazard:
- Our microwave had to be set on a kitchen island (I had to purchase, due to 130 cm worktop surface missing according to the property floor plan and the show flat we visited). An electric extension lead is running from behind our fridge freezer, along our floor to plug in our microwave, which is set with no back wall to lean onto. My three-year-old daughter or I could easily trip over the extension lead while getting access to our fridge freezer, and the microwave would fall off the worktop. There is nowhere in our kitchen to fit our microwave.
- Our only floor unit and drawer can not be open because the developers omitted to allocate the standard 65 cm worktop depth for free-standing appliances and to fit in a corner joint at the junction of our kitchen run where our cooker edge and the floor unit and drawer edge are joining. This floor unit is the designated dishwasher space. However, since the unit door can not be fully opened no dishwasher would fit. Furthermore, doors from kitchen equipment should not obstruct one another.
- Our only 60 cm worktop, where we can put our dirty dishes and washing bowl for rinsing dishes, has electrical switches above it. Water can easily splash on them, and they are 20 cm horizontally away from the sink edge. Our microwave used to be on that worktop, but it consisted of having an electrical extension lead running from the worktop on the left-hand side of the sink, and behind the sink, to plug the microwave in.
Other issues with our boiler room that causes health and safety hazard:
- The temperature in our boiler room reaches 30C + in the winter and 40C + in the summer. The heat travels through our hallway flooring. In the summer, our property reaches minimum 25C at night (with windows open and cooling machines and ionisers turned on 24 hours) because our property's tall aluminium windows are south facing. The heat emanating from the windows radiates towards our hallway and is met by the heat emanating from our boiler room which is situated at the centre of our property. Consequently, our property is turned into a living toaster which is affecting the health of my three-year-old child and myself. Letters from GPs and Health Visitors were provided to support the allegation.
- Our ventilation system is not working. The wrong contractors were sent in to fix the issue last year. The covers of our ventilation box and our ceiling are still laying on top of our immersion tank, as we were assured the right contractors would come in.
- Our central heating system needs pressure added on a regular basis.
Other hazard issues in our bathroom:
- Some fluffy black material is visible from the ventilation duct. The duct can not be fully open.
- Our ceiling light is malfunctioning because the pull string was fitted too close to the corner of two walls. The pull string can not be pulled down because our knuckles touch the door frame instead it has to be pulled outward away from the walls' corner.
- A large 'gingham like' rust stain is spreading under our lino flooring, just below and away from our radiator, suggesting a leak in the central heating pipes intertwined with the concrete foundation flooring and the cast iron support bars. It could explain why all our radiators need constant bleeding and pressure adding, resulting in having to lift up their covers regularly and straining myself, as well as damaging the radiator covers and the walls. As a result, the fittings on the plasterboard are now loose, and the radiator covers could fall on my child, me and visitors.
Other hazardous issues in our property:
- To deal with the extreme heat emanating from our boiler room and the lack of ventilation in our bathroom (none of those rooms has windows), our landlord suggested having both room's doors open twenty-four hours. However, those doors open outwards in our hallway and front our bedroom doors. Furthermore, the bathroom door and the boiler room door are fitted in opposite ways - they touch each other when open. Meaning, to permit a safe walkway in our hallway only one door can be fully opened since it will touch the other room's closed door. Vice versa. Furthermore, a boiler/storage/electric fuse box room is not a safe environment for an under five years old child - this door should be closed.
One defect which is inconvenient:
- Our broadband sockets supplied by our landlord do not work.
Because of the extent of the issues in our property, chances are I am omitting something.
Our property is a one off. There is no property laid out the same way as ours in House. House contains twenty-one social housing properties. It is understood that our property is the sole property in * House with so many amenities and defects causing health and safety concern.
