An NHS worker in Peckham’s ceiling imploded after a storm in January, creating a hole ‘large enough to climb through’ – and it still hasn’t been fixed two months later.
Darren Say, who lives in a flat for key workers managed by Clarion Housing, said a heavy rainstorm on at the end of January caused water to begin leaking through his ceiling.
On 29 January, the senior pharmacy technician at King’s College Hospital returned from a long shift to find a pool of water on the floor and a metre-long hole in the ceiling.
Clarion Housing had treated the initial leak as an ’emergency’ and sent a roofer to fix the problem the same day. However, the contractor said they could not access the roof to repair it without scaffolding being erected.
“The ceiling begun to bulge and swell over the next six days and I told them it was going to collapse soon,” Darren said. “It eventually did and now there’s just a see-through hole where I can see the metal roof.
“It has stressed me out a lot – I work long days so I have had to come home to a freezing flat with a huge hole in the ceiling over the winter months.”
The issue had also spread to the communal corridor outside his flat, where water was also dripping down onto the floor. The leak in the community area has now been fixed, but the hole in Darren’s flat remains open.
Darren says that Clarion sent another contractor to his flat when the ceiling initially collapsed but says the problem remained: “All they did was pull down some mouldy material that was hanging out of the hole and said there was nothing they could do until the roof was repaired.
“I waited every day for scaffolding to appear so they could fix the roof but it never came – until one day the leaking just stopped, but the hole remained.”
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Darren soon realised that the cause of the leak appeared to have been fixed, but no one had been sent to repair or cover the hole in his ceiling.
“I called Clarion again to ask when it would be fixed, and I was told the roof had been repaired and that my ceiling repair had been escalated to a supervisor. I was told someone would call me within 48 hours. That was on 24 February – and I still haven’t heard anything.”
A Clarion spokesperson said: “We’re very sorry for the delay in repairs to Mr Say’s ceiling which we recognise should have been completed much earlier.
“Following reports of a leak, the source was incorrectly identified initially and a further inspection confirmed this was caused by a faulty pipe within the ceiling void, which has now been repaired.
“While we made safe the affected areas and completed repairs to the communal space, there was an unacceptable delay in progressing the internal repairs to Mr Say’s home for which we sincerely apologise.
“An appointment is in place to complete the remaining repairs and we are committed to resolving this issue as quickly as possible while keeping Mr Say updated on progress.”
