Elderly residents of Newcastle tower blocks have called for “urgent action” to finally resolve a lift breakdown nightmare that has plagued them for months.
Occupants of high rise apartments across the city have regularly complained about being left stranded in their homes due to broken lifts since Newcastle City Council appointed a new repairs contractor last year. The repeated failures have seen some lifts out of action for weeks or even months at a time, posing a major problem for people with mobility issues who are unable to get up and down stairs.
Lib Dem councillor Doreen Huddart presented a petition to the council on Wednesday night on behalf of fed-up residents in Shieldfield House and The Spinney and their relatives, calling on the local authority and Your Homes Newcastle to take “urgent action to ensure a reliable firm is promptly employed”.
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Reading from the petition, she said: “For several months now many of us have been inconvenienced by the repeated malfunctioning of our residential lifts. Unfortunately, when these lifts have been out of action for days and weeks this has led to many calls to YHN and others, plus anxiety for ourselves and our families.
“If a lift is broken and an emergency occurs, many of us would have difficulty to leave the building. Elderly residents, especially the less mobile ones, rely on lifts to get out to health centres or hospital, as well as doing their shopping, having visits from relatives, or just getting out into the fresh air.”
The council had been forced to say sorry for the problems last September and said then that it would be “pressing more effectively” for improvements from its contractor. Labour councillor Irim Ali, the council’s cabinet member responsible for housing, apologised again this week and said the authority “knows how inconvenient and distressing it can be” for people to be left without a lift.
She added: “We can assure residents we are working to address the concerns with the lift contractor. While the lifts have been undergoing repairs, staff from YHN have been making extra visits to the building to monitor the progress of the repair and provide reassurance to their customers.
“I understand that every property has been visited to offer extra support to those customers who require it and letters have been sent to all customers to ensure that anyone who they were not able to speak to in person is kept up to date. We are closely scrutinising the performance of the lift contractor and it is our priority to reduce any further disruption.”
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