Ceiling falls in on the borough’s housing champion Dr Brian Potter

Published: 29th April, 2011
by PETER GRUNER

THE borough’s housing champion Dr Brian Potter really had something to protest about when his own bathroom ceiling started to collapse following work by contractors.

Plumbers had been fitting a new bath in a flat above Dr Potter’s at the Angel on behalf of housing agency Homes for Islington.

Dr Potter has chaired both the borough’s leaseholder and tenant organisations for 10 years. He is regularly in dispute with HFI over complaints about the quality of workmanship by contractors.

He said: “A plumber installed a new bath for the tenant upstairs. It appears they may have gone home after not properly sealing around the floor of the new bath. My understanding is that children may have been playing with a shower which flooded the floor, and the water seeped through to my ceiling.

“My ceiling started sagging so I contacted the contractors Mulalleys. They offered to come round and make the ceiling safe. I said: ‘Don’t bother, I’ll do it myself and probably make a better job of it’.”

HFI have now instructed Mulalleys to install a new ceiling for Dr Potter, who has been a leaseholder at the flat at Pleasance Place off Essex Road since the 1970s.

A spokesman for HFI said: “Our contractor, Mulalley, worked on our tenant’s bathroom, capped the shower and advised the tenant only to have shallow baths until siliconing work around the bath was completed. The tenant disregarded this and reconnected the shower causing water to leak. This water damaged Dr Potter’s ceiling. This was explained to Dr Potter at the time.”