The Apollo story continued: mission intolerable

Published: 11 February 2010

A diary of despair from a reader whose council home is being brought up ‘to minimum housing living standards’

• IN the summer of 2009 we were sent a letter by [council contractors] Apollo telling us that work was necessary to bring our houses up to standard, a number of weeks later two surveyors made arrangements to visit our home and take pictures of possible works to be done. 

In September we were sent plans of what work would need doing (our bathroom, toilet and kitchen) and that they would be in contact to tell us when work would commence. 

On January 20 a letter told us that work would take approximately two weeks, take place between 8am and 6pm and that we should either take adequate time off work, or give our keys to the site office and be liable for any damages (or loss of items) that may occur.

On January 15 we received a letter with no postmark, while we were in, stating that work would now start on the 21st, a small inconvenience considering we had already booked a day off work for the 20th. 

With nothing to do we made our way to the Archway site office to hand over the keys, where we were informed that no one would be coming on the 21st as “no one starts work on a Thursday or Friday, we’ll be there on the 25th”. 

“Work” began on January 25. 

Three protective mats were put on the floor, the workman left. The same day the project’s liaison officer knocked on the door asking where the workman were. 

We shrugged our shoulders. 

At 8am on the 26th the fitters began ripping out the kitchen fixtures and then left. 

At 8am on the 27th, the builders buzzed up, (by which we deduced that they didn’t have any keys) and removed tiling. On the 28th after returning from work we established that plumbers had been and carried out some work, it also appeared that some electrical work had taken place (we were never consulted about either). 

On the 29th plumbers walked in on my child getting changed. 

On the 31st (a Sunday) we received a letter with no postmark (again while we were in) saying that “we will need to gain access to do some electrical work”, which was confusing as it appeared some had already been done. 

February 1: work continues, no one seems to know where our keys are. 

February 3: an electrician  appears, turns off the power to our fridge destroying food and also spares the time to break our TV receiver, which has important stored programmes for my son’s university course. 

February 4: we contact the site manager to inform him that what is happening is not acceptable; he then tells us that “if your not happy then I’ll pull everyone off” and that “I’m not promising when they’ll be back”. Our kitchen sink is ripped out and all water in bathroom and toilet sinks are turned off, leaving us with no water to drink from except  from our toilet bowl or bath (I haven’t). 

February 5: some painting was done, only noticed after stepping in the paint and it getting on clothes, as no signs had been left.

Today (February 8) we are still without drinking water and electricity for our fridge. The assistant site manager comes to the house and is in a mixture of bemusement and shock at what a poor state the house is in. 

Hopefully some work will now get done.
Thomas McQuillan
Lissenden Gardens, NW5