• THIS is the second time I have written publicly about our appalling landlord, Clarion Housing, in three weeks.

I started noticing bits of wet tissue paper around my front walkway last weekend. Then I found faeces on the doorstep. I couldn’t figure out what was happening.

Yesterday, I had a conversation with my upstairs neighbour, who told me her soil pipe had cracked weeks ago and that she had contacted Clarion about this three times already.

The horrible realisation that I’d been walking through my neighbour’s sewage slowly sank in. We worked out that the cold spell had caused the pipe to break open and allow solid waste out and down into my area.

This is where Clarion’s behaviour becomes reprehensible. My neighbour had contractors round to look at the pipe weeks ago. They confirmed the leak. They confirmed that it was waste liquid getting out. They put in a report to Clarion.

When I rang the landlord I was told that “planning” hadn’t dealt with it because they were trying to sort out whether to have scaffolding or to hire a cherry-picker to get up to the breach in the pipe. They could not give me any information about when it would be fixed.

In what universe is it acceptable to allow a leaking soil pipe to go untreated for weeks on end? I know the solid waste only started to come through in the last few days but what did “planning” think was in the liquid waste – butterflies?

What private landlord would get away with this sort of prevarication while their tenants walk in filth? This is Islington, not a favela on the outskirts of Rio.

I will continue to publicise Clarion’s inadequacies. I urge others to do the same.

NAME AND ADDRESS SUPPLIED