Lewes woman suffering from medical conditions left without heating or water for nine days

Debbie Aldridge from Lewes was left for nine days without heating or hot water while suffering with fibromyalgia, asthma and a heart condition, according to the BBC.
By Izzi Vaughan
Published 25th Jan 2024, 11:30 GMT
Updated 25th Jan 2024, 11:44 GMT
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The BBC reports that there were multiple requests to her housing provider, Southern Housing, who say that they have now fixed the boiler. In the meantime Ms Aldridge was relying on the kindness of her neighbours for help.

According to the BBC, Ms Aldridge said: "They need to start listening to people because there's people out there that haven't got a voice that can't keep phoning people up or haven't got the mentality to be able to do that."

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She added: "The pain (...) is absolutely unbearable sometimes. I do need a hot bath in the morning to ease it." She said that the “disgraceful” situation has impacted her mental health.

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Lewes woman suffering from medical conditions left without heating or water for nine daysLewes woman suffering from medical conditions left without heating or water for nine days
Lewes woman suffering from medical conditions left without heating or water for nine days

According to a spokesperson for Southern Housing: “Our engineer replaced the boiler in Ms Aldridge’s home on Wednesday (24 January) and all work is now complete. We apologise to Ms Aldridge for the time it has taken to carry out the repair work to her boiler. We provided temporary electrical heating to Ms Aldridge while we completed this work.

“A local mains water outage caused a delay in us being able to diagnose the cause of the issue. We also had to wait for our supply chain to provide a specialist electrical part to enable us to complete the repair. However, this part didn’t resolve the issue as expected, so we decided to replace the entire boiler. Our team remain available to help Ms Aldridge if she needs any further support.”

Councillor James MacCleary said: "This is a clear failure from Southern Housing. Their public statement fails to give any reassurance that they have learned from this incident and put systems in place to avoid a repeat. It is heart-breaking to hear about Ms Aldridge's suffering during this period which has included nights with sub zero temperatures. My thanks to her neighbours for stepping in to help.

"I have written to Southern Housing for a full explanation of how this incident was allowed to happen and what steps they are taking to ensure that such a failure does not happen again."

Related topics:BBC