Readers will remember the case of John H, the disabled South Kilburn pensioner, who was without heating for many weeks in the winter. After repeated stories on this blog and help from Brent Council the heating in his housing association flat was eventually restored, but the associated repairs are still outstanding. The wordcloud above gives an idea of the nightmare that John has encountered in trying to get the repair completed.
In despair, John wrote another letter to Wembley Matters yesterday that I publish below:
Dear Editor,
It is now 3 months (24th Nov. 2025-24th February 2026) since I reported to my landlord Octavia, that 2 of my thermostats had failed and needed to be replaced.
However, I am still waiting for the repair to be completed, even though my heating was restored on the 6th of January 2026.
Yesterday SureServe were due to install a new thermostat in my living room, but they failed to attend, which has now reached 14 missed appointments over 3 months.
Mears are due to come tomorrow to repair all the damage caused by SureServe when they restored my heating system.
I made a complaint to Abri yesterday by email regarding waiting for 7 weeks to get my temporary thermostat replaced with a new one in my living room.
As they did not reply to yesterday's email, I have now submitted another one, using the Abri complaints online form regarding the wait of 50 days for my thermostat.
John H
South Kilburn
5 comments:
John H just sent this email: Mears did attend this morning and repaired the damage caused by Sureserve 50 days ago, leaving just the installation of my new thermostat by Sureserve still to be carried out.
Where is this mans compensation?????
The incompetence is staggering, playing the blame game is not the answer.
Housing Associations used to be community based serving defined local communities - Brent Peoples, Paddington Churches spring to mind.
The mergers over the past 20 years created massive Housing Associations far too big for their own good and no longer properly accountable to local communities.
The main beneficiaries of these merges are the Housing Association's CEOs and Directors being paid excessive salaries.
It is time to break up these large and unresponsive Housing Associations and bring them back under proper public control so that they return to their roots and once again serve the needs of their tenants rather than being a gravy train for their Directors.
Like 1990's South Kilburn when the estate zone was being run-down to be brownfield re-developer land. If only we understood permanent development/ the new tower lord estate shut-out of the UK social contract.
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