Families left with no heating during cold snap are forced to sleep in coats
Residents say they have been left without heating and hot water for 11 days
Friday, 17th January — By Daisy Clague
Families on the King Square estate get wrapped up
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FAMILIES in newly-built homes near City Road say they have been left without heating and hot water for 11 days during the coldest period of the winter so far.
Young children and elderly and disabled residents are among those on the King Square estate wearing their coats to bed and relying on fan and oil heaters in sub-zero temperatures as their taps and radiators remain cold.
The problem is affecting all houses on Pankhurst Terrace, a row of 11 three-storey homes that were brand new when these residents moved in March 2020. The Tribune spoke with residents from 10 of the 11 homes, who are still being charged for heating and hot water despite having none.
Mother-of-three Amanah Shahid said they kept calling the council. “We keep being told it’s been resolved, but nothing is resolved,” she said.
“The stress is just too much. We have all got kids. We just want to be heard. It’s the frustration of not being listened to, of not having one person to speak to. They don’t care about us.
“Some of us are Muslim here, so we’re having to get up at the crack of dawn to do our ablutions to pray – freezing cold water. Our children are praying – freezing cold water.”
King Square estate is the site of Islington’s largest council home development project in recent years, where 140 new properties were built between 2016 and 2022, 98 of which were for social rent.
Father-of-four Youcef Haroune told the Tribune that his 10-year-old son, who recently underwent chemotherapy, has twice been readmitted to hospital during the cold snap while their home has been without heating and hot water.
“They try, but what they are doing is not enough,” he said of the council’s efforts to fix the problem.
Some houses have had intermittent, lukewarm heating and water since the outage started, but never lasting more than an hour, residents said.
Sarah, whose two young children suffer with asthma that is exacerbated by the cold, said that one council worker visiting her home to check the heating said “that’s just how the radiators are” – lukewarm, and only on the top. While this is the longest period that residents have been without heating, it is not the first time individual houses have felt the cold.
In 2022 Sarah’s family were moved to a hotel in Enfield for the night after 16 days without hot water on Pankhurst Terrace.
“These people don’t listen,” she said. “We all moved here thinking we’d hit the jackpot, but every week there’s something wrong.”
Similarly, Mr Haroune won compensation from Islington Council after being left without heating for 15 days in November 2023, when he was not even provided with electric heaters to tide the family over.
Like the rest of King Square estate, Pankhurst Terrace is on a communal heating system, meaning all the houses get heating and hot water from one source rather than each house having its own boiler.
That shared heating source is the Bunhill Heat and Power Network (BHPN), a trailblazing green energy initiative that extracts hot air from the Northern line tunnels and circulates the energy to homes, schools and leisure centres in the vicinity.
Other King Square homes on the network – including tower blocks Rahere House and Blackwell House – have not been affected by heating or hot water outages.
Councillor John Woolf, Islington’s housing chief, said: “Our housing repairs team are aware of the heating and hot water issues affecting some homes on Pankhurst Terrace and have been working urgently with our maintenance contractor to resolve them. Repairs carried out on January 15 restored the communal boiler, and further works are ongoing to address issues within individual homes.
“We understand the impact this has had on residents and apologise for any disruption caused. Temporary heating has been offered to affected households, and tenants will receive compensation in line with council policies once the matter is fully resolved.
“An engineering team is conducting a full investigation to improve the reliability of the heating system going forward.”
He added that residents experiencing issues should contact Housing Direct online or by emailing repairs@islington.gov.uk or calling 080 0694 3344 or 020 7527 5400 for support and repairs.
