Dear LPG,

I have a friend who lives alone, is 77 and had a stroke some years ago. She recovered fairly well and, although the stroke left her physically weaker and doing everything much more slowly, she still gets out and about and has regained her ability to look after herself.  She always tells me that the most profound effect of the whole episode for her was the fact that she is always cold.  You will remember the really hot summer we had last year and I remember finding her in cardigans and complaining of the cold even during that time. 

The winter of 2017 was not a particularly bad one as they go but it really took its toll on this lady who was seriously aware of the effect that nights were having on her even though her flat had been insulated for the most-part by her landlords.  Her bedroom was a bay windowed room which extended from the main house, with a separate loft area, and the insulators said that they were unable to access it. 

In late February 2018 she could stand it no more and telephoned her landlords L&Q, explaining the situation.  Her thinking was, that with a year before the next winter there would be some improvement.

 After a month when nothing happened I helped her to write emails and telephone them and I have to say that I felt quite sorry for the advisors that answered my calls and told me how sorry there were about the situation on each and every occasion.  I was not rude but just explaining what was needed was drawing their sympathy and I felt that their inability and lack of authority to help without needing to go to a manager must make them feel really bad at times.

After about three months my friend received a rather obscure letter, which looked like a circular, informing that someone would be visiting her property to look at the asbestos situation, and he came.  During a phone call a little after that we were told that he had come to survey the bedroom loft situation but, if he had, he didn’t know about it and neither did the tenant.  We continued our campaign of repeated contact and we eventually got the name of one of the managers and started to email him.

He passed the problem on to their version of the warmer homes people and when not a lot continued to happen we telephoned and emailed them too before emailing the manager who referred us, to tell him that nothing was happening.  Their solution always seemed to be a surveyor and another three visited over the next six months.  Every time they came they highlighted the same problem, that there was no access to the loft above the bedroom, but we kept calling and emailing.  We continued to email and let them know that we knew what the problem was; we just wanted to know how and when they were going to fix it.

As ever, we continued to email and he continued to pass the problem on, but he would send emails and copy us in each and every time.   Over the next year there were telephone calls and emails flowing backwards and forwards, and we learned all about each and every department within L&Q’s organisation. 

You will be pleased to hear that finally after a year of contact on the subject, in early March 2019, it took just two hours for them to have a workman finally put an opening in the bedroom ceiling so that the insulation could be laid and now my friend has some heat.

The story is a bit long winded, but I just want to say that, no matter who the landlord is or what the problem is, you just have to keep at it.  I am a young pensioner with a fair amount of tenacity and a little time on my hands but if you are an elderly tenant with a problem that your landlord appears to be ignoring, perhaps you need to find your version of me to take up the fight with you; someone, with the fight that perhaps you don’t have as you get older, to keep up the momentum. 

It also has to be said that if you are a younger pensioner and you can see something in an older friends’ life that is not being addressed, you re perhaps the person that is in a position to help.  I found it a lot easier to be a pest for her than I would have for myself and the final outcome was really rewarding.    Keep at it; you will get there in the end.   

JH, New Cross