Stacey Edwards, with her dog Molly, is calling for compensation and an apology

RESIDENTS living on an estate made famous in a notorious Channel 5 documentary about Islington’s “haves and have nots” were left stuck in frozen homes with no heat or hot water for more than a month.

People in the Earlsferry Way block of the Bemerton estate – close to Caledonian Road – said they had no means to keep warm as they faced the coldest snap of the winter so far when temperatures plummeted below freezing last weekend.

And they say they have been “forgotten and ignored” by the council after their communal boiler broke down weeks ago and nobody came to talk to them about it.

That all changed after a phone call from the Tribune to Islington’s press office on Monday which prompted a flurry of activity in the housing department.

AJ Bailey with Smudge the dog, and the letter saying the boiler had broken

“We finally got a letter – hand delivered – on Monday at 7.30pm, saying the communal boiler is broken and will be replaced with temporary boilers,” said AJ Bailey, who contacted the Tribune this week after growing angry at the lack of communication from the council.

“It offered us fan heaters too, but I had already gone out to buy one after it got so cold in here. They’re taking the digestive aren’t they?”

Mr Bailey, who suffers from mental health issues after he was the victim of a knife attack, has been putting extra money on his electricity meter to pay for the heater, and keeping his oven on, but is worried about the escalating cost.

Other tenants described washing in buckets while one woman, 85-year-old cancer survivor Bridget Ryan, known as Bridie, who suffers from rheumatoid arthritis, said she washed her hair in a pot of water this week for the first time in her life.

Bridget Ryan

“It’s very bad,” she said, describing the treatment tenants had received. “Nobody’s told us anything. Nobody has come near us. It’s as if we didn’t exist. I mean, it doesn’t matter whether I’m 85 or I’m 18. You need heating,”

Another tenant, Stacey Edwards, called it “horrendous” nobody from the council had been in touch and so she finally made the call herself after feeling totally fed up with being cold.

Calling for an apology, the tech producer said: “They definitely need to acknowledge that they left people without heat. My friend Alex, two doors down, he’s been washing in a bucket. They wilfully ignored it evidently, because they’ve been getting reports for however many weeks.”

While all households want compensation for the loss of heating and hot water – and for the extra money they have spent on heaters -– leaseholders also want to see their service charge of £176 a month cancelled for the period of time they have been without heating.

Earlsferry Way block

The estate featured in the controversial 2020 Channel 5 documentary called The Mega Council Estate Next Door which looked at extremes in poverty and wealth in the borough.

Islington Council said this week it would offer compensation “in line with the council’s no heating and hot water policy” but made no mention of the £176 a month service charge leaseholders pay.

A spokesperson said: “We’re very sorry that residents at Earlsferry Way have experienced problems with their heating and hot water.”

They said all three boilers serving the estate broke on November 22, and only was one was fixable but said contractors had “knocked on the door of every flat to offer support and a portable fan heater to anyone who needed one” on December 1.

Two temporary boilers are due to be installed on the estate “before the end of next week at the latest,” the spokesperson added.