Housing Issues

to come.  However, the one thing that became apparently clear is that they got professionals in to do the show flat, whereas they brought in the biggest of cowboys to do the works on everyone else's flats, and suffice to say, what we got bore no resemblance to the beautiful show flat we were promised. 

 

During this process, the whole block descended into chaos, with many tenants left without bathrooms and kitchens for weeks on end, forcing some tenants to temporarily move out because they were left without so much as a working toilet. The pipework they installed was a total botch up, causing an endless amount of floods, something I was a victim of several times a year for over a decade until the problem with the pipework in the flat above me was finally resolved 3 years ago. They also installed dodgy taps in the kitchens and bathrooms that kept on making loud vibrating whining noises day and night, which was a problem that again, went on for well over a decade until the last of these taps was finally replaced last year.  The work in our block were so appallingly done and caused so many problems, that the repair bill to fix them probably cost several times what the actual contract cost in the first place, and they have ruined this block so badly that it would be cheaper to knock it down than it would to continue papering over the cracks. 

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I'd heard a lot of rumours that there was and always is plenty of fiddling, bribes and backhanders going on with regards to these maintenance and repair contracts, and it really wouldn't surprise me, because there does seem to be a common theme with regards to most major works within Newham council in that they always use relatively new and unknown companies, who come and in and make an absolute botch up job of the work by doing it on the cheap, then conveniently go bankrupt shortly after the money has been siphoned off, leaving the council to foot the bill for the mess they have left behind. 

 

I'd hoped the council might finally have began to understand that doing maintenance work on the cheap always ends up costing more in the long run, so when the assistant director of housing sent in some workmen to renovate my flat after I had lodged a serious complaint about the 15 years of misery I'd been subjected to, I'd hoped that finally they might have learned their lesson, but no such luck, because they cowboys they sent in to do my flat made the decent homes contractors look like seasoned professionals. I went through several months of hell because of the stress these contractors subjected me to who all went out of their way to be deliberately difficult, and made such a mess of my woodwork, that it would take me twice as long to prep it and repaint it as it would have done to for me to do it myself in the first place.  These people couldn't even put the handles on my kitchen cupboard units straight.  Suffice to say, a year later, the work is still not completed, and I've given up trying to get the council to finish it.

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Newham council do not employ competent contractors, end of subject. They always use cheap cowboys who make a dogs dinner of it which always costs them way more in the long run because cheap work always fall apart very quickly.  This issue is without a doubt the main way in which huge amounts of council money is wasted unnecessarily, and is the main reason why so many tenants suffer from such appalling living conditions. The council really does need to learn that doing things on the cheap really is a false economy.

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