February 23, 2011
The Riot Act
The city’s housing boss has called the last month’s big freeze, “the riot act”. This was when gas repair contractors left many Birmingham house tenants with no heat during the cold days.
There had been problems with boilers and repairs, according to Coun. John Lines. This began after facing a barrage of criticism from rival councilors.
Contractors failing to show up on time and the availability of spare parts, one saying he did not have the right glue, was the comment of Coun Peter Kane.
One elderly resident was told be a repairman that the delay is due to the availability of the part, but then 10 days later the same reason was giver to the elderly by an another repairman. Luckily, three weeks later, another repairman attended the problem and unluckily, found the fault was only a loose wire.
This is a clear picture that the first two repairman did not even bother to look in detail the boiler, this was the reaction of Coun Kane.
Even though new contracts have saved £43 million, it only lines up with “if you pay peanuts, you get monkey”.
Coun Lines, however, hitback citing that there were more problems because more of Birmingham’s council houses now had central heating systems.
Coun Lines further added that Statistacally, only 30% of the housing in 2004 had central heating.
The figure now grows to 99%, many of them new combi boilers.
The worst winter in 30 years had led to an unprecedented number of calls to the authority’s repair centres with an incredible 8,000 a day at the peak.
Morrison Facilities Services is the contractor for the south of the city and Mears Group for the central and PH Jones for the north.
Filed at 9:15 pm under Consumers' Mart, Counseling, News Center
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