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Didn’t know where else to put this.
I live in what was originally Sheltered Housing for retired/disabled/elderly tenants. My landlord is one of the biggest Social Housing Groups in the UK and is about to get bigger. When we moved here in 2003, it was a small Trust that administered housing just in East Lindsey, now it is about to become a huge combine of several Housing groups and associations.
We have always had to struggle to get repair & maintenance issues sorted. It took 10 years of battles to get our ancient Night Storage electric heaters replaced by a GCH system, which reduced our energy payments by over 50% and meant that we had good, controllable heating that did not go cold after 4 pm in the winter months. There have always been open fireplaces in each home, with an ancient solid fuel back boiler still installed at the rear. For the first 5 years, in view of the poor heating, we asked every year if we could have an open fire: we never received an answer until I discovered that the back boilers were actually dangerous. If we had started a fire, the boiler could have exploded, according to the HSE (Health & Safety Executive) this has happened in several cases, in one a 7 yo child was badly injured. So I notified my landlord, who ignored it. Then I notified the local Environment and the HSE, whereupon an ‘engineer’ came out to look at the fireplace and informed me that the chimney was capped and had been for at least 20 years! Ever since that time I have repeatedly reported the boiler issue, to no result. Until this morning…
I had a call on my mobile from a workman who said that he was going to visit my home “To remove the Coal Bunker”. I laughed at that: don’t have one I said. “That is No. X xxxxx Close, isn’t it?” Yes, I said, and had to get into a long conversation to inform him that there had been no coal fires in our chimney since who knows when, and we had been here for 15 years. The guy came out, with his mate, had a look and gave us the great news that they would remove the whole fireplace back to the wall, along with the back boiler. They were concerned that it was still connected by pipework. “To what?” I asked, but they had to go take a look at our (3 yo) gas boiler and pipework, to make sure.
So it has only taken 15 years to carry out something that, I discovered, the landlord should have done as a dangerous Health & Safety instruction to all landlords in an HSE letter over 10 years ago. With a bit of luck, I can remove the shelf which carries the TV atm and rearrange my audio/video stuff into a decent unit, flush against the wall.
When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.
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