WALL OF SHAME

Muirhouse residents highlight council’s repairs failures

• This afternoon Muirhouse Living Rent members will be highlighting Edinburgh council’s home repairs failures in chalk outside Pennywell Road shops before hand delivering their demands regarding the repairs process within Edinburgh Council properties to council buildings on West Pilton Gardens
  
• This action comes after repeated instances of residents’ repairs’ needs being ignored, delayed or delivered to a poor standard and seeks to call Edinburgh council’s attention to the wider repairs system
  
• Tenants demand that Edinburgh city council introduce measure to improve delays, satisfaction and communication regarding repairs

Today, from 1pm – 3.30pm, Living Rent members from Muirhouse will gather to protest the failure of Edinburgh City Council to provide an adequate standard of repairs to council properties in the area.

Members’ will write a wall of complaints in chalk complying with social distancing measures to bring the council’s attention to the significant delays, lack of communication, and poor quality repairs across these properties which have left many residents living with long-term mould, damp, drafts, and leaks.

Information received from a Freedom of Information request shows that despite there being less than 5,000 council properties in the North West locality of the city, to date there are 1,390 uncompleted repairs jobs.

Residents also learned that in the last year alone, the council received over 2,815 repairs complaints relating to heating systems and 1,472 relating to plumbing works with the average time taken for a repair to be completed being 35 days – this is despite a 2019 Edinburgh council report revealing that 90% of homes in Muirhouse required repairs [1].

Ongoing issues with severe damp, mould, and leaks in Muirhouse residents’ homes is contributing to respiratory health problems with one resident being told by her doctor that her mould-ridden property was no longer safe for her and her child to live in.

Edinburgh council advice to residents suffering with extreme mould and damp is to ventilate and heat the property, but owing to the structural insulation problems across many of the blocks, heating the properties sufficiently is a costly process.

Some families across the blocks estimate their winter heating costs to be as high as £50/week – adding to problems of fuel poverty in an area where one in three children live in poverty [2].

Amidst a global pandemic, accessing secure, safe and quality housing is more important than ever, and residents fear that the upcoming winter will exacerbate the consequences of unaddressed repairs issues.

Following the chalk wall of shame on Pennywell Road, tenants will proceed to march down to the West Pilton Gardens Council offices where they plan to deliver their letter of demands by hand.

These demands include:

– A new system by which tenants must sign-off on all repairs jobs prior to the council closing the case
– Tenants to be given ‘repairs process’ satisfaction forms after the completion of each repair
– Having a named council employee who works in the repairs department who is designated to be responsible for all repairs cases across Muirhouse
– Tenants to be given a deadline for any second repairs visits within 24 hours of the first visit by a tradesperson or council worker
– Tenants request Edinburgh council provide a reasonable timescale within which all repairs should be resolved

Muirhouse tenant and Living Rent member, Shafiq, said: “I have been waiting for over nine months for a leak repair. My home is permanently damp and causing respiratory problems during a pandemic – and I’m not even living in the worst flat in my building!”

Another Muirhouse-based Living Rent member highlighted that “this type of behaviour by Edinburgh council shows the need for an in depth review of their system which is clearly failing tenants in the middle of a pandemic, when access to warm, secure and quality housing is crucial to health”.

Notes

[1]https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/arts-and-culture/edinburgh-council-finds-90-cent-muirhouse-flats-need-repair-141071

[2]https://www.edinburghlive.co.uk/news/edinburgh-news/shameful-figures-show-extent-child-18153034

[3] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-45508172

[4] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/authority-acting-like-a-slum-landlord-wbncv9nr8

[5] https://nen.press/2018/09/13/slum-landlord-muirhouse-high-rise-conditions-insufferable/

www.livingrent.org