A housing association is receiving an extra 300 calls per day from its tenants in Carlisle who have suffered from frozen pipes, flooded houses and even exit doors being frozen shut during the recent big freeze.
Riverside Housing Association, who has over 6000 properties in and around Carlisle, would normally get around 150 calls to its repair line everyday. However, this figure has tripled to almost 500 calls, and their plumbers have been working into the early hours to get boiler and pipe problems fixed.
Another housing Association, Derwent & Solway, has also been inundated with calls from tenants in West Cumbria. During the last week they took the same number of calls they would normally get in a month. The private sector has also been hit badly with many landlords having to make claims on their landlord insurance policies to sort out plumbing problems for their tenants.
While many people are on long waiting lists for assistance, Riverside has a team of 22 repairmen and is able to respond to call-outs within 24 hours – although it will take longer to complete repairs.
Carol Vallely, head of property services, said “We have a high proportion of elderly and vulnerable tenants. While some are already linked to Careline, we are using visits to encourage more residents to take up the service.
“We’ve had flooding of properties, burst pipes and boilers going. Even our joiners are doing plumbing jobs as they’ve been trained to be multi-skilled. We’ve had two weeks solid of this kind of intensity. There have even been doors frozen and people have not been able to get out of their homes.”
Both Riverside and Derwent & Solway Housing Associations, like many other social landlords throughout the county have experienced a significant increase in calls due to the ongoing severe weather and staff are prioritising each call as it comes in, taking into consideration old people, vulnerable tenants, as well and those with disabilities and young children.