A nurse has pleaded with an Ayrshire housing association to fix a catalogue of problems at her home.
Carrie O’Donnell says her one-bedroom semi-detached house in Straiton has developed a series of internal and external problems that have left her “appalled”.
The agency nurse, 32, claims she first alerted the association over a small crack in the render at her home three years ago.
However, the crack on the side of the property has developed over time and has rendered the brickwork underneath vulnerable to the elements.
Other problems have developed; guttering is showing signs of corrosion, concrete on external walls has deteriorated and brickwork is showing signs of water penetration.
Now cracks have appeared in internal walls and on Carrie’s ceiling in Knockbreck Road.
But she claims Ayrshire Housing has been slow to address and repair the ever-growing problems.
The property is only around 16 years old and Carrie, who moved in eight years ago, is at her wit’s end.
She told Ayrshire Live: “I take pride in my property, as do the neighbours, but at the end of the day it’s their house, they have to fix it.
“I’m appalled with the way we have been treated. The service has been poor.
“Three years ago I started to notice a small crack, which just got bigger. Now, at the bottom of the brickwork, the bricks are coming away. Ayrshire Housing keep padding me off.
“Even my neighbour has sent them e-mails to get the problems fixed. But they keep making up excuses.
“They’ll tell me they’ve not got the contractors, or they are backed-up with repairs. It’s atrocious.”
But Carrie, who lives with her two cats and two Chihuahuas, insists the problem is not contained to just her property.
She claims other houses in the street are developing similar problems.
She revealed: “It’s all the houses, not just mine. It’s more widespread than mine. Every single property is affected, maybe 12 in total. And it’s all similar faults. I’m starting to get cracks inside the property.
“I’ve been on to Ayrshire Housing for the last three years about these problems and they’ve still not done anything about it.
“The service is awful. Our boilers are meant to be serviced every year, we all got a new Ecodan heating system in. The engineers were due out in September [to service] but they’ve not been out for that either.”
She added: “I just want someone to come round, carry out an assessment and do the repairs. We all look after our properties in this street and we’ve been on to Ayrshire Housing but there’s been no response.
“This should not be happening to a build of that age, it’s just going to get worse. They should have sorted it when it was a small problem, now the problems are everywhere.”
Ayrshire Housing insist they've received no calls from Carrie regarding problems with the rendering.
Jim Purvis, technical services manager at Ayrshire Housing, said: “If there is a problem then we’ll be happy to go down and have a look at these issues.
“By all means, I’ll get someone down there to have a look. We’ll send out a maintenance officer.”
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