'Spoiled' Christmas (From Witney Gazette)

'Spoiled' Christmas

3:27pm Friday 5th January 2007 in Witney By The Page Turner

WITNEY mum Claire Cooper was forced to move out of her home at Christmas because a housing association left her and her family without proper heating.

Miss Cooper, 23, reported a problem with the boiler at their home, in Fallowfield Crescent, to Sovereign Housing Association.

Engineers called at the house and managed to get the hot water back on, but said the boiler would need new parts before the heating could be restored.

Fan heaters were also provided, but Miss Cooper said they were not adequate to heat the three-storey home properly, and they were forced to live in one room.

The carer, who works for Oxfordshire Learning Disabilities NHS Trust, said she and her partner, Pete Matthews, were forced to move in with her mother, Janet, in Wadards Meadow, because her 18-month-old son, Jamie, and Mr Matthews' daughter, Rhiannon, eight, could not stand the cold.

Miss Cooper said: "As I'm a carer, I don't usually get Christmas off. But this year, I did, and it was going to be our first Christmas together at home. We tried staying in the house one night but it was just too cold for Jamie - this has really spoilt our Christmas."

She added: "The tenants' handbook that a complete heating failure should be classed as an emergency, and repaired within 24 hours, but Sovereign didn't seem to be treating this as an urgent situation."

Andrea Freethy, a spokesman for Sovereign Housing Association, which manages 13,000 properties, said: "We are sorry this has happened over the Christmas period at a time when it is difficult to get spare parts.

"We provided four temporary heaters as soon as we could, and we have been working to fix the problem as quickly as possible.

"We got the first call at 8.45pm on December 23, so it didn't leave us a great deal of time to respond over Christmas."