Residents battling to pay the bills in a Salford Council housing complex say a proposed 4.1 percent rent increase would be ‘devastating’ to them. Tenants in the Pendleton Together-managed flats have faced numerous issues with their apartments over the years.
People living in the Pendleton flats say they have to spend hundreds on energy — due to a combination of dangerous cladding being removed in the wake of the Grenfell disaster and a heating system which relies on insulation to keep warm. The NIBE heaters use vents to the exterior of the building to draw fresh air in, which is then warmed up and circulated.
However, when the outside temperature drops below 16C, the system goes to ‘electric-only mode’, which residents say, in effect, means they have to run an immersion heater ‘24 hours a day’ — leading to sky-high bills for some of Salford’s poorest residents.
