MY STORY
The day I signed my tenancy agreement and got the keys to my new flat at David Lee Point in September 2007 really was one of happiest days of my life, as I finally had my first permanent home that I could decorate and furnish how I liked, which was a dream come true, however, little did I know that this dream was going to turn into a total nightmare. At the time I moved in, they were in the middle of refurbishing the entire block as a result of the decent home scheme, where the Government had given all councils huge amounts of money to bring all council flats up to a decent standard, so there was a lot of upheaval and noise disturbances going on, which was to be expected, but I obviously accepted that because it was only short-term and the results were going to be worth it, or so I thought. However this is before I realised that I had acquired a council flat from the most incompetently run council in the entire UK.
My flat is located next to the lift shafts and the first major problem started about 6 months after I moved in when new contractors were brought in to fit new lifts in David Lee Point, as well as maintaining them. Immediately after the renovation was completed and the lifts were brought back into service, I noticed that I could hear clacking and scraping noises within my flat coming from the lift shaft when the left hand lift was in use. I complained to the council about this and was referred to the head of lifts, Geoff Williams, who I first spoke to when he arrived at David Lee Point to investigate, who was at the time, very polite and sympathetic to this issue. Indeed, he was jumping up and down with excitement like a hyperactive schoolboy who was desperate to go to the toilet as a result of the never ending supply of money the Govenment were throwing at Newham council which enabled him to employ Griffin Elevators who apparently the high priests of lift installation technology. In fact I remember the exact words he said to me at the time which were "Newham council are throwing so much money at me that I don't know what to do with it".
However, Griffin Elevators iconic status was soon to come crashing back down to earth when Mr Williams announced that their engineers had been up and down the lift shafts, but couldn’t either locate the problem or resolve it. Indeed, he was so adamant that there was nothing he could do that he offered to have my flat sound proofed in order to appease me. This was certainly not an acceptable option, because apart from the fact that it would have caused me a great deal of inconvenience and would probably have had limited effectiveness, I was certainly not going to be put through that because he was too incompetent to resolve the issue. But as I was soon to learn, the council's tactic with regards to dealing with such problems is to exhaust those who complain into submission, rather than resolving the complaint, and after a tedious exchange of emails, I simply gave up out of utter exasperation of my inability to reason with him, as it became clear that he is a textbook narcissist who is totally beyond any ability to be reasoned with, so I was left with no choice but to tolerate the noise.
The noise actually got a lot worse for a while as a result of one of the lifts having to be taken out of service because the gearbox had apparently broken, despite the fact that they had been newly renovated, and that we were told that they had all the parts for the lifts, and that they would be fixed within hours should they breakdown. This left the noisier lift running pretty much 24/7 until the new gearbox arrived, which went on for three months because that's how long it was going to take to get the part custom made. Apart from the ridiculousness of having such an essential part needing three months to custom make, you would have thought Mr Williams might have learnt from his mistake and ordered a spare box to be made, but no, nothing so bold, and I am sure you can guess what I am about to tell you. Yes, that's right, shortly after that lift was finally back in service, the gearbox on the other lift went, meaning we had to have another 3 months of that lift being out of service, meaning that we had to put up with having a full year with only 1 lift.
However, shortly after that, another problem reared its ugly head. Both lifts started making extremely annoying high-pitched screeching noises. Again, I complained and again, and I got the same excuse that after careful investigation, Griffin elevators have stated it was impossible to fix. This time however, I was not standing for any nonsense, so after the usual carry-on back and forth that seemed to go on forever, I finally said the magic words that always (at least before they changed the rules on legal aid) made Newham council miraculously achieve feats which, based on the way they behave, you would think even the deity of your choice would struggle with; “fix it, or I’ll take you to court”. So immediately after my declaration, Griffin Elevators come out again to investigate and the following day, they shut both lifts for several hours each for maintenance, and hey presto; the screeching noises were no more. The clacking and scraping noises were still there, but as irritating as that noise was, it was heaven compared to the screeching noises, and I had concluded by then that putting up with that was considerably less painful than trying to reason with Geoff Williams.
However, after 18 months, the screeching noises came back, which gave me the feeling of dread over the inevitable fact that I was about to experience groundhog day all over again. And yes, I complained and complained and complained and complained and complained, which as usual, got me nowhere as Mr Williams pulled out his usual excuse that it must be a figment of my imagination because nobody else had complained about it. It was only after I started to get hysterical through sheer exasperation and demanded that Geoff Williams calls me to resolve this that something finally got done. He did indeed call, but was clearly in a huff that I had summoned him to do his job and behaved like a sulky, tantrum throwing 5 year old who proceeded to give me sarcastic attitude about how I had “demanded” that he call me. But to his credit, he did resolve it, albeit begrudgingly and Griffin Elevators were out within 24 hours to resolve this seemingly impossible problem, which they did indeed do.
However shortly after that, we were back at groundhog day yet again. The screeching noises returned with a vengeance. I complained an endless number of times, yet despite Griffin Elevators coming out on numerous occasions, they maintained that there was nothing they could do. I tried on numerous occasions to call the housing department to get this sorted but was subjected to the council’s new voice recognition system that made it virtually impossible to speak to an actual human being. So as a last resort through absolute desperation, I called Griffin Elevators and asked to speak to whoever is in charge of lift maintenance for our block, to which I was told that they would be unwilling to speak to tenants directly, and had to direct any complaints to the council. However, Griffin Elevators then contacted Mr Williams to tell him I had called and gave him my number which they had clearly got from caller display, resulting in the most disturbing phone call I have ever received in my entire life.
The phone rang, and when I answered it, I was greeted with a psychotically angry voice screaming down the phone at me, demanding I identify myself. This voice was of course that of Mr Williams. I was utterly gobsmacked and refused to do so until he identified himself. After both of our identities were established and I explained why I had called Griffin Elevators, he then proceeded to scream and yell at me because I had apparently made a complete fool out of him as a result of that call. Yes that's right, I had complained over 100 times with nothing getting done, I was ill with the noise, I was not sleeping as a result of it, but apparently he is the victim in all of this. He insisted that I couldn't have made any complaints because he had no record of them, as if somehow the fact that he had not been informed of the excess of 100 times I had complained about this is somehow my fault. So Mr Williams carried on being belligerent with his usual gaslighting, insisting that there was no noise issue that needed addressing because I was the only one who had complained about it, to which I stated that if he didn't sort this problem out, I would take the council to court, and this was really where he sunk to new depths. He responded by sneering and laughing at me, and firstly pointed out that I wouldn't be able to get legal aid, then pointed out that I probably didn't have the money to pay for it, and then stated that I probably didn't have any other tenants who could back up my complaint. It is such a shame I don't have a recording of that conversation, because if I had, it would have been enough to get him sacked 100 times over, because he was beyond abusive, he was downright threatening.
So after an endless amount of arguing with him pulling his usual stunt of insisting that there was no noise issue and that it was either a figment of my imagination, or coming from somewhere other than the lift, he finally agreed to come and visit me with a member of the noise team, utterly convinced that they were going to come to the same conclusion as him. However he was in for a rather (if you will pardon the pun) noisy awakening when I was able to demonstrate perfectly that everything I was saying was true, indeed it was most satisfying to watch the smirk wiped off his face when we were subjected to an ear piercing screech as we travelled up and down the lift together. I even remembered his exact words which were "ooh, that's a loud one", and it was fascinating to watch just how two-faced Mr Williams proved himself to be, as when he was with the member of the noise team, he was all sweetness and light, telling me how lovely it was to see me, in fact you would have found it almost impossible to believe that this was the very same man who screamed down the phone at me like a psychopath the week before. I explained to the noise team officer that this was severely affecting both my sleep and mental health, and indeed I was in such a state at the time that he informed me that if I didn't calm down he would have to leave, which is pretty typical of the council, as they are always happy to take a dump all over us, but when someone confronts them with the smell they've created, suddenly they are the victims. Maybe the member of the noise team should have asked himself how calm he would have been in my situation if he hadn't had a decent night's sleep in months as a result of the noise. But to his credit, he agreed that the noise was totally unacceptable, and in view of what happened shortly afterwards, he clearly gave Mr Williams a serious telling off. Indeed, I would have killed to be a fly on the wall during that conversation, because shortly after, he took the lifts out of service, and not only did he fix the screeching noises, he also fixed the scraping and clacking noises that I had been subjected to for the last 8 years which were clearly audible during that visit, noises which he previously insisted were impossible to eliminate, which does make me exceptionally angry that I have had to put up with that all these years on his insistence that it was impossible to fix.
So for the next two years, and indeed for pretty much the first time since I moved in, the lifts were blissfully silent, and I do mean silent. No screeching, no clacking, no scraping; nothing. In fact, if I hadn't known the location of the lift shafts, I would never have known they were there. However, my blissful world of silence was about to come crashing down around me when I received a letter from the council informing me that the lifts were about to be renovated again, one lift at a time. This left me with a feeling of dread, because apart from the fact that it meant there was going to be a 8 months of noise disturbance (although in reality it ended up being nearly 12) whilst the work was being done, I strongly suspected that history was about to repeat itself, especially when I found that Mr Williams was being put in charge of the project, and he didn't disappoint. The letter informed me that there was going to be a meeting in the meeting room at Brassett Point for anyone who wished to discuss the matter further with the project team and the contractor, which I obviously attended, as I wanted total assurance that those lifts were going to 100% silent within my flat. I explained to the contractor exactly what I had to put up for the previous 10 years, and was categorically assured that they were a competent company and that those lifts would be totally silent. Indeed, it was one of three things we were promised, as we were also promised faster lifts that were completed by 22nd June 2018, yet they failed spectacularly on all three counts. I have come to the conclusion that the fastest way to find the most incompetent contractors on planet earth is to leave that task to Geoff Williams.
The new faster lifts ended up being ridiculously slow, and indeed way slower than the old lifts, which is mainly because when the lift reaches it designated floor, it takes the equivalent of an additional 9 floors of travel before it finally settles and opens the door, and I know this because I have timed it. As a result of this, when there was only the one new lift in service during the renovations, it was utterly insufferable, with queues for it literally going out of the block during peak times, and the lifts works in both my block and Brassett Point were completed 10 weeks behind schedule, which is downright pathetic, so it doesn't exactly take a great leap of faith to assume that the last assurance wasn't going to be met either, but even I thought maybe Mr Williams had learned something from his previous mistakes, but no, he instead becomes even more insufferable, as the subsequent tedious exchange of 22 emails proved.
On the morning the first of the refurbished lifts came back into service, I went out for an hour and returned to find the new lift up and running. Within 5 minutes of my returning home, I heard the familiar scraping noise coming from the lift. I was very familiar with the sound because I had heard it thousands of times before. But knowing what an insufferable pain in the backside Geoff Williams is, I made absolutely 100% certain I had my facts straight as to which lift this noise was coming from by spending several hours sitting in my hallway with the door open, listening for the noise and observing which lift was moving at the time, and obviously it was the new lift, because the noise started the absolute second the new lift came back into service, and had I been dealing with anyone other than the narcissistic Mr Williams, none of this would have been necessary. But was that good enough for him? Of course not! When I informed him of the problem and told him the lengths I went to in order to ensure I knew exactly which lift the noise was coming from, what does he do? He sends me an email informing me that I must be mistaken, that the noise must be coming from the old lift and proceeds to take it out of service. The level of stupidity required to do something like that is nothing short of breathtaking, especially when you consider how difficult it was going to be to resolve the problem in view of the fact that the noisy lift was now the only one in service. But of course, the idiots he brought in to do this renovations were running close to two months behind schedule, so he was desperate to get work on the second lift started immediately, so the one week run in for the new lift went right out of the window. How stupid does he have to be to think that noise emanating from the lift shaft that starts the second the new lift comes into service is coming from the old lift? But I doubt he is that stupid, he is just someone who clearly gets sadistic pleasure from making other people's lives miserable, just so he can feel that little bit better about the sorry car-crash he sees when he looks in the mirror. It is a typical narcissistic trait, and as someone who has a lot of experience with such people, I have no doubt that he is a textbox narcissist.
So we were back to the same carry on, with Mr Williams whining, moaning and protesting that the noise was either a figment of my imagination or must be coming from somewhere else, and let's not forget his favourite excuse, "well no one else has complained about" and as I've already mentioned, this time it took a tedious 22 email exchange to get him to do anything. After putting up with the noise for several weeks, he finally agreed to take the only working lift out of service to rectify the issue, much to annoyance of other tenants, and did manage to quieten the lifts somewhat, but certainly not completely. However, that didn't last long, and the noise returned within a couple of weeks. However, as it was the middle of summer, it wasn't that disturbing, because I had my windows open, meaning that the outside noise drowned it out to a large degree, so I waited until the new lift was back in service before I complained about it as I didn't want to inconvenience other tenants. This complaint resulted in the same tedious back and forth exchange of emails, but then I got an email from him that really took the biscuit. He informed me that he needs to bring a colleague along with him because he has hearing problems and can't use his hearing aids for personal reasons. You really couldn't make that up could you? Yes, that's right, despite all these years he has been insisting that the noise is a figment of my imagination, Mr Geoff 'I can't hear the noise' Williams tells me that he needs to bring a colleague with him as a pair of ears because he is as deaf as a post. But after an endless exchange, the best I could get out of him is that he would put it on a list of snagging issues that would eventually get resolved. So I was just expected to put up with it indefinitely until he can be bothered to get around to fixing it. But why should he care? He can go home to his lovely quiet home. So did he ever get around to resolving the issue? No, and it was only after I had complained to a counsellor and kicked up a stink at the tenants committee meeting that I finally got an unannounced visit from the head of housing and property services Jon Hillier to investigate.
Despite the fact that the noise was clearly audible, Mr Hillier deemed it insufficient to require any work done to rectify it, and he had the audacity to suggest that I should be required to put up with some operational noise from the lift, because it was unavoidable, due to the age of the block, which is an absolute pile of rubbish for two reasons. Firstly, the age of the block bears no relevance as to the council's ability to install lifts that are inaudible within the adjacent flats, especially when we were informed at the Brassett Point meeting that the lift shafts were in excellent condition, and was also categorically assured by the contractor that those lifts would be completely inaudible within the adjacent flats. But secondly, if some operational noise is so unavoidable, why, after an 8 year battle and a telling off from the noise team, was Mr Williams able to get those lifts 100% silent previously? So what has happened to the lift shafts during that 3 years that has suddenly made this such an impossible task? But thirdly, and most importantly, if operational noise from the lift is so unavoidable, this should have been explained to me before I accepted the flat, and should have been clearly stated in my tenancy agreement, yet neither of these things happened. So as Mr Hillier was refusing to do anything about the noise because he didn't deem it was serious enough, I was again forced to put up with it, but it soon got progressively worse to the point where it sounded like a train was going past every time it is in use, which started to become problematic about a month after Mr Hillier visited my flat. However, as per usual, when I complained to Mr Williams, he tried to make me believe that I was the only person who complained about it, so out of sheer exasperation, I started knocking on doors of other flats next to the lift shaft, and only one resident answered the door, but that was a very nice lady on the 13th floor, who told me that the noise was driving her insane and that her kids were crying over it, she also confirmed that this had been an ongoing problem over the last decade. When I went down a couple more floors, a lady came out of the flat to the right of the middle flat and asked me what I was doing. When I explained, she said she was being disturbed by the noise as well. At first, I was struggling to believe her because of where her flat was located, but she described the noise perfectly, so it would appear that this issue is disturbing residents in all the flats that are on the side of the lift shaft. Now that I think about it, it makes sense that flats on the left hand side would hear the noise because the lift shaft is adjacent to their bathrooms, but I certainly didn't expect it to be audible in the right hand flats, but I have since confirmed this with my next door neighbour. I have also since spoken to the tenant above me, and the tenant above him at number 99, and both have confirmed everything I have said, and both have also complained about it until they were blue in the face. However, the testimony I got from the tenant two floors below me was on another level completely. According to him, not only was he being driven mad by the noise, but he had noise complaints made against him by his neighbour because they thought he was doing DIY throughout the night, and apparently, he was being threatened with eviction over it. I also have friend who lives on the tenth floor in flat 56 which is facing the lift, but on the opposite side of the block, and he said that even he could hear the lift in his flat every time it goes past his floor.
The serious lift noise problems persisted for another year until I sent Mr Hillier an email on 4th August 2020, informing him that I wanted to make a formal complaint in lieu of taking legal action against the council, asking him who I should direct my complaint to. I also clearly stated that I wanted him to visit my flat with a member of the noise team to verify just how serious the noise was, and that under no circumstances was he to get those lifts repaired until he had done so. Instead, he ignored my email, and snuck out behind my back and had it fixed within 2 hours, indeed, I didn't know he could run so fast, which is quite a miracle considering the state of him. I emailed him back shortly afterwards, asking him why he ignored my email and specific instructions to visit my flat with a member of the noise team before fixing the lifts, and also reiterated my request for the contact information of whom I should direct a complaint to, but again was ignored. At the time I didn't have the strength to pursue the matter further because of the stress of lockdown, which also prevented me from accessing a dentist who could extract the infected teeth I broke as a result of grinding them through the stress of not being able to speak or relax in my own home, which were making me so ill I could barely get out of bed. The problems with the lift are still ongoing and currently, the lifts make a howling, growling noise as they travel past my floor, and also, when either of the lifts stops at a floor, they make this clunking noise which is clearly audible regardless of how far away they are from my flat, although obviously, the noise is much louder the closer the lifts are to me. Again, I've complained numerous times, and even taken it this to the assistant director of housing and the Mayor who are both ignoring me.
However, as disturbing as the noise disturbances from the lift have been, this really is the tip of a very large iceberg, as there have been no end to the problems which mostly stem from the cowboys they got in to refurbish our block. Firstly we had the carry on regarding the decent homes scheme block and flat renovations, which were overseen by a man named Chris Binns, who is so incompetent that he makes Geoff Williams look like Einstein. Like Geoff Williams, he employed the biggest bunch of cowboys who could not have made a bigger mess of the whole thing if they'd tried. The whole building descended into chaos, with tenants flats left like a building site for weeks (and in some cases months) on end without kitchens and bathrooms, resulting in many tenants having to temporarily move out of their flats because they were left without so much as a working toilet. The whole project was completed months behind schedule and were clearly completed using cheap, unqualified labour, using cheap, shoddy materials. Before they started the works, they had a show flat we could visit to see how the final completed works would look, but suffice to say, what we received bore no resemblance to what we were promised in the worst way possible. But it was the bathroom and kitchen refits that were to leave a legacy that was to make the life of all tenants in the block a living hell for years to come.
Firstly, shortly after the bathrooms were completed, the whole building starting to erupt in a symphony of loud, vibrating noises, day and night, which were coming from the bathroom and kitchen taps, as it would appear that the contractors installed cheap taps that were not fit for purpose. Every time someone would turn on a tap in either the kitchen or bathroom, it would make this horrendous, loud, whining noise that would be audible throughout the entire building, and often made the noise constantly without needing to even turn the tap on, which was a result of pressure building up in the pipes. When this did happen, the only way to actually stop the noise was to turn the offending tap on and then off to clear the air blockage causing it, meaning that if it was occurring in a flat where the resident was not at home, you had to wait until they returned before it stopped. I can recall at least 50 occasions when this happened in the flat of a tenant who was away for the night, meaning we had to put up with this breathtakingly irritating, loud, vibrating, whiney noise that made mine and the lives of other tenants hell, making it impossible to sleep. If I had to add up the number of nights I have either been unable to sleep at all, or had a severely disturbed night's sleep as a result of this, it would add up to about 3 years worth, and that's not counting the sleepless nights from the lift noise. All the residents were up in arms at the tenants committee meeting, and as usual, the officials who were at the meeting acted like they couldn't care less.
However, before this was resolved, there was a much bigger problem looming, because Chris Binns' incompetence was about to be displayed on a level that is beyond breathtaking. It would appear that when he got the renovation works started in the blocks, he didn't bother to get the building surveyed first, which is an error so basic, it is beneath that of an 8 year old. As a result, it turned out there were severe problems with the pluming and drainage, meaning that they were going to have to rip out our bathrooms in order to swap the positions of the toilet and sinks, meaning another year of a ridiculous amount or carnage, and noise disturbance. The only good thing that was supposed to come of this was that they were going to replace all of the faulty taps whilst they were refitting the bathrooms, but did they? No, they replaced some of them, but plenty of dodgy taps were left, and as the years progressed, more and more of these taps developed this issue which only stopped once and for all in 2021 when the last dodgy taps were finally replaced, and shortly before this, there were even tenants putting up notices all over the building asking for the offending flat to call repairs and get the taps replaced.
Another consequence of these works stems from the dodgy pipe work the contractors installed, resulting in endless floods throughout the building that are still going on today. I've had endless problems with my kitchen and bathroom being flooded, which used to happen on average twice a year. My kitchen and bathroom have had pretty much permanent flood damage from about a year after I moved in here. I had part of my kitchen replaced once as a result of the damage which they made a right mess of, and I have had to redecorate my bathroom 5 times through persistent flood damage. Shortly after the kitchen was replaced, it was ruined by another flood, and they kept on coming regularly until the leak issue was finally resolved in 2020, meaning that there was little point in getting the flood damage repaired before that because the floods were so frequent that whenever the flood damage was repaired, a new flood would come to its funeral. The occupier of the flat above was equally as sick of it is as I was because every time the flood occurred, they needed to turn the water off in his flat leaving him with no water.
But with regards to the bathroom refits, you would have thought that after Chris Binns had demonstrated how breathtakingly incompetent he is, it might have been a good idea to consider getting someone else to oversee the new contract for these works, but no. Who did they put in charge of cleaning up the monumental mess Chris Binns made? Wait for it....drum roll........Chris Binns!!! Well that was just genius wasn't it, and yet again he didn't disappoint. Again, he got a bunch a cowboys in, who again mostly consisted of cheap, unqualified labour, who used cheap, shoddy materials. The plumbing work was an absolute joke, and has created a noise disturbance in itself, as there is a lot of noise from water pipes, showers and toilets from other flats which are clearly audible within neighbouring flats, something many residents have complained about. Indeed my toilet partially flushes when someone is using their bathroom, and many others have complained that actual toilet waste from other flats has ended up in theirs. I cannot even leave toilet cleaner in my toilet to soak for cleaning lime scale because it will be flushed away within 30 minutes as a result of this. The floors were so uneven after the levelling compound was put down, that I couldn't use a set of bathroom scales because there is nowhere I can place it where all four feet are touching the floor, and they even painted the bathrooms with standard water based emulsion, which obviously peeled off almost instantly and left everyone's bathrooms in a complete mess. I spoke to the project manager about it and she told me that the reason why they used water based emulsion was because it was specifically ordered by Chris Binns. How stupid does someone have to be in order to instruct contractors to paint bathrooms with water based emulsion? I also had a really expensive floor put down previously that had to be ripped up, and when I insisted that the council replace it, they told they had no legal requirement to do so which is another blatant falsehood. They also made a right mess of the tiling which only got replaced after I kicked up a monumental stink, but that is nothing compared to the biggest issue which has essentially turned these flats into a serious fire hazard.
The main reason why a single fire in a flat in David Lee Point was unlikely to ever spread throughout the entire block was because each flat was completely sealed, meaning that other than through the windows, there was nowhere a fire could physically escape. However, that changed big-time after the piping was changed in the bathroom, because the concrete wall leading to the piping that stretched between flats was ripped out and replaced with melamine chipboard sheets which incidentally warped and buckled with the condensation created within the bathroom, and if that wasn't bad enough, behind it is plastic piping instead of metal that we were told was going to be wrapped in fireproofing material. It wouldn't take anytime at all for a fire to get past the chipboard sheet, and the fireproofing would have only hold back a fire for a certain amount of time, meaning that as soon as it gets to the plastic piping and melts, it will go right up the building, melting the plastic piping all the way up as it goes, resulting in the fireproofing surrounding it collapsing, rendering is useless. The only argument you could make for this to be an acceptable solution is the same argument they made for not putting enough lifeboats on the Titanic, i.e. that help would get there in time. But as we know from the riots of 2011, and the current social instability, that is not always possible, and Incidentally, during the meeting that was held at Brassett Point to discuss these works before they started, this was pointed out by a resident who was in the building trade, but it was dismissed outright, as apparently, the fireproofing they were going to be putting around the pipes was more than sufficient. However, during some recent renovation works to my flat, (although this is Newham council we are talking about here, so I do use the term loosely) that boarding covering the pipes was removed and it turns out the contractors were lying, as there is no fireproofing covering those pipes at all which means that David Lee Point is essentially a Grenfell Tower waiting to happen.
So 15 years on, the misery I have been put through has taken a huge toll on both my physical and mental health. I lost 5 teeth as a result of grinding them through the stress of not being able to sleep or relax in my own home, which in itself caused a whole host of health problems which I am fortunately now recovering from. But the problems are still no resolved, and as I am typing this, the lifts are still making clunking noises every time they stop and start at a floor. I have complained to absolutely everyone about this, and I do mean everyone, including the complaints department, the head of lifts, the noise team, the head of maintenance, my housing officer, a councillor, the assistant director of housing whose behaviour in response to it you can read about here, the director of housing and the Mayor, who despite the fact that I have exhausted every other conceivable avenue to get this resolved, is refusing me a meeting and instead told me to take it back to the complaints department. Like everyone else, the Mayor's office is no longer responding to me.