A man has received just £520 in compensation from a housing association after his grandmother passed away in a mouldy flat. Michael Poole first alerted Orbit Housing Association to the issue almost five months before 95-year-old Pamela Brown died, the Mirror reports.
The devastated grandson says a leak from the flat above caused extensive water damage to his gran's bathroom in September 2021 and led to the growth of black mould. Michael, 41, said the weight from the water coming through the wall pushed down on the support bars for the elderly in the bathroom, caused the medicine cabinet to fall off the wall and resulted in water coming out of the shower socket.
He said Pamela had been healthy for her age but died on January 22, 2022, with pneumonia listed as the main cause of death. The housing association wrote to Michael apologising for the delay and offering him the measly £520 payout.
He told the Mirror: "It shows the value they put on somebody's life, not that there is a value anyway, but it shows their mentality."
Michael, who was dealing with a health issue himself when the leak sprung, said he first raised the problem with Orbit when carers sent him images from the flat in Culworth House in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, but that his reporting of it "fell on deaf ears". Then he saw the conditions for himself when he visited his gran at the start of October.
The business development manager said: "You felt like you were walking into a jungle it was that wet. You could clearly see the ceiling coming down.
"You could see the stress that the support bars were under - you could see them coming down. At the beginning of October, Orbit said it would take a week and I said this was a risk to life.
"I also explained to them because of the dampness the floor is getting wet and she could slip. She was disabled and used a Zimmer frame. I was really concerned that if she had fallen or if the support bars gave way she would go down."
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He said somebody did eventually come around and deemed it safe, but two days later the bathroom cabinet fell off the wall. When this happened, the electrics to Pamela's bathroom were cut off and he claims the only way she was able to clean herself was to be transported by the use of a wheelchair to a spare bathroom on a separate floor, as she usually used a walking frame.
He said: "The only way to take care of her hygiene was to wheel her upstairs to a spare bathroom that was across the corridor from an empty flat", which he claims Orbit wouldn't give her because it was used for visitors. You can imagine what that does to your dignity being pushed in your dressing gown in a wheelchair to a bathroom like that and this lasted for about a month."
Michael added: "I called Orbit again and kept getting told 'to leave it with me'." But he claims the company didn't respond, adding: "It was always me chasing them.
"Then a manager sent a dehumidifier to the flat and it is what you would use on a construction site, not in a one-bed flat. Not only did they make it unsafe because they were trailing cables everywhere but my nan had already contracted a chest infection.
"Her infection markers were so high in her system that the district nurse she said would have not survived the night had she kept on being like this. I was told by a medical provider that you would not put a dehumidifier like that in a flat."
In an email from a GP seen by the Mirror, they acknowledge that if there is damp or mould "you're more likely to have respiratory problems such as respiratory infections".
It added: "If a dehumidifier is used incorrectly it can lead to moisture levels that are too low which could impact your health causing dehydration, dry eyes and skin and respiratory problems, these problems are greater in the clinically vulnerable groups such as the elderly."
Despite Michael raising the issues in October, he said it wasn't until the beginning of November that Orbit representatives came out and even then he was not satisfied with the remedy.
Michael claims: "All they did was come out and paint the damp patches. I had to force the manager to come out himself to see the state of the property and it was then they agreed that they will take the wall and shower down to do a proper investigation into the black mould."
He claims he later had a senior manager come down who claimed they didn't see a problem and accused him of wasting their time. He added: "I told them 'you can't see any black mould because you painted it white' and all I had to do was pull back the splash panel above the sink.
"The wall was so wet that it just came off and you could see the black mould behind it. All I was doing was turning around their liability to make sure it was a safe environment."
Michael said: "Ultimately my gran was 95 and in remarkable health for a woman of her age. Since the damp started she was in and out of the hospital with infections and she wasn't able to fight it off. She came home from the hospital on January 20 and passed away on January 22."
When he first asked Orbit about what the policy was for bereavement he was told he had to give four weeks' notice. After his grandmother died, he posted the keys through the office's letterbox giving the notice.
Michael was then horrified to get a letter that summer saying he was in arrears and that they would take possession of the flat. He said: "They were still charging rent because I hadn't informed of the death and when you inform them you have to give a death certificate and unless I gave them the death certificate they were going to charge rent."
In a letter from Orbit to Michael in May 2022, they awarded him £520 after "partially agreeing" with his complaints. They also acknowledged that Pamela was a "vulnerable tenant".
One "goodwill payment" was given for the delays in fixing the leak as well as the decorating and for not replacing the handrails. Another "goodwill payment" of £400 was given for the "upset, frustration and inconvenience caused to your grandmother by the service failings".
It reads: "I acknowledge that your grandmother was a vulnerable tenant and that it was the delay in fixing the leak that caused the severity of the damp problems in the bathroom."
And an additional £50 was given "for poor complaint handling", adding: "We should have dealt with this complaint at stage one of our complaint process as soon as we accepted it."
A spokesperson for Orbit told the Mirror: “We are saddened by the death of Mrs Brown and extend our sincere condolences to her family. In mid-September 2021 we were notified that water had seeped into Mrs Brown’s bathroom as a result of a leak from the property above. Once we had completed the repairs, the bathroom was fully redecorated in December 2021.
“Whilst we acknowledge that this took longer than we’d have liked and have previously offered Mr Poole compensation for the frustration caused, we have been provided with no evidence that the water ingress in Mrs Brown's home was in any way a contributing factor to her death.
“After repeated requests to Mr Poole for the provision of Mrs Brown’s death certificate, once this was provided all outstanding charges allocated to the property’s rent account were reversed and Mrs Brown’s account was closed. Mr Poole has not been required to make any payments to us.”
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