Family left without heat for nine weeks

By Linda Fort

February 07, 2013 (SOURCE)

A mother-of-six was left without hot water and proper heating for nearly nine weeks after the council “lost her paperwork”.

 Through the bitter cold and snowy winter weeks with sub-zero temperatures, Kelly Hughes, 30, of Heroes Walk in Whitley, and her family huddled round two electric heaters and showered at the homes of relatives since the first week in December.

 Mrs Hughes said her gas boiler started to play up in her Reading Borough Council-owned house late last year. The council sent out an engineer to fix it, it failed again and another engineer came out and fixed it again.

 It finally gave out in the first week of December and Mrs Hughes was told it needed a new part.

 The council gave her two electric heaters and her wait for the repair began.

 The weather turned bitterly cold and the snow started to fall.

 She said: “The house was really cold. We used one heater in the living room and moved the other one between the children’s bedrooms. We didn’t have any hot water for nine weeks either.”

 Mrs Hughes’s children – aged two to 14 – had to go off to family and friends to shower. “I bathed the little one in the house, warming up pans of water, but we couldn’t all do that,” she said.

 She said so long without proper heating had made the house bitterly cold and there was mould growing on walls in the coldest corners.

 She said: “I rang the council almost every day to try to find out what was happening. At one point they said they had lost my paperwork.”

 Finally, at the beginning of last week, a contractor came out to look at the boiler – and condemned it.

 She said: “It was obvious they should have done that at the beginning of December.”

 On Thursday last week, Mrs Hughes had high hopes someone would actually come out the following day to replace her boiler and in fact her boiler was in the end replaced on Friday.

 She said: “I think it is a disgrace. I don’t like complaining, but I just didn’t know what else to do.

 “It didn’t look as though they were going to do anything until my dad threatened to speak to the newspaper.”

 Reading Borough Council spokesman Oscar Mortali said: “We are sorry for the obvious inconvenience caused to Ms Hughes and her family for the delay in dealing with this problem and understand that the length of time this has taken to resolve is not acceptable.

 “A new boiler was fitted on Friday last week and Ms Hughes will be offered compensation for the use of electricity and for the obvious inconvenience.

 “The delay relates to a problem reported in December.

 “An engineer visited the next day, advised new parts were needed and we supplied Ms Hughes with temporary heaters while we waited for those parts to arrive.

 “However an administrative error meant the parts did not arrive until late January and it was then found a entirely new boiler was required.

 “This was fitted as a matter of urgency on Friday last week.”

Here are SOME of the comments from the public:

This is a story I read in my local newspaper. The story itself isn't noteworthy but the comments and reactions from some readers made me angry. the appalling attitude and opinions of some people are offensive to me. the media has done a good job demonising anyone claiming 'Benefits', giving people a scapegoat, allowing society opportunity to kick those whom they think are 'the cheats, low-lives, scroungers who consume our taxes. 

(Please view pie-chart taken from government welfare site AND it is BEFORE the cuts)

The reality is far from that described by the media. If you breakdown welfare spending into sections, it is clear that the Governments top expenditure  (36%) is pensions!! Even if you added up Council tax benefit, Housing benefit,Disability Benefit, Employment & support, Income support and job seekers, it still amounts to less than the State pension and pensioner benefits.

What's next people, we start picking on the pensioners as scrounger because they didn't invest in private pensions???