Greenwich Council leave residents without water

Greenwich Borough Council has left disabled and vulnerable residents without water for three days.

A resident told the Canary:

It’s officially gone into code emergency. They don’t know how to fix the water issue, and people are being moved into temporary accommodation. They’ve just delivered a block of portable toilets and showers for people to use.

The Canary has previously reported on Greenwich council endangering the lives of residents in new-build flats.

For six months, residents at the Ignatius Sancho Road Estate in Kidbrooke complained of blocked fire escapes, dust from construction sites causing serious health issues, and hazardous air filters that completely contravene fire safety laws.

Then, the council decided to take the resident who reported the issues to court for publicly exposing the failures. This was under the guise of “harassment”. However, the reality was that she was simply asking them to fix the issues that were making her sick.

Failing to help disabled residents

One resident at the Ignatius Sancho Road Estate in Kidbrooke, Greenwich, told the Canary:

Water went out around 9/10am and I was not supplied with drinking water until gone 10pm despite calling the emergency line multiple times.

She told us that many tenants did not get water at all on day one, including a vulnerable disabled tenant, for whom she raised concerns with staff. His neighbour was the only one to have water delivered.

The water outage is affecting the whole estate. This includes 122 households across four blocks of flats. After three days:

Some lower levels have a trickle of water. I had nothing, but now I do, but the upper levels can’t even flush toilets.

She continued:

When I raised concerns for another disabled tenant that may potentially be going without, [name of staff member redacted] on the emergency line, refused to help. I was told she needed to call herself, despite my explaining last time she did not know what to do or who to call.

[Staff member] was more concerned about her having double the amount of water than going without, finally stating she had “logged the job for someone to drop water to your flat, anything else I can’t help with”

The resident asked two staff members on the emergency line if they were able to locate vulnerable tenants to distribute water directly to them. But they admitted they did not have access to that information. The justification was “there are a lot of people”.

Additionally, the staff who then distributed water were not aware of the number of flats or tenants. This meant they repeatedly ran out of water and had to do multiple trips back and forth, wasting hours of time before residents received water.

‘Emergency plan activated’

Even after water arrived, council staff were unaware of which residents were classed as vulnerable unless they had “proactively called and raised concerns for their own welfare.”

Obviously, disabled or otherwise vulnerable tenants may not know how, or physically be able to, do that. This raises questions about the protocols Greenwich Council has in place for emergency situations.

The resident the Canary spoke to has multiple disabilities and health conditions, and still, the council did not check on her until 32 hours after the water went out.

Now it’s day 3, and the council has officially classed the situation as an emergency. They have installed portable toilets, and showers are reportedly on the way. Some tenants have now also been offered temporary accommodation as the council is unsure how to fix the issue.

When the resident raised the issue on social media, one councillor responded by saying the issue is with a water tank and the “emergency plan has been activated” while teams work to fix it.

In an official response to the Canary, Greenwich council claimed that they delivered bottled water within two hours. They also said they were in regular contact with residents and went door to door to “ensure vulnerable residents had support”.

Obviously, that is not what the Canary has heard. We will be talking to our sources in the building and keeping an eye on the situation.

Feature image via Greenwich resident