Belvedere woman feared collapsed ceiling could have killed her

Karen Howsam, 48, was upstairs in bed when she heard a loud bang and later discovered that three quarters of the ceiling had fallen down on August 18.

Karen Howsam

Despite attempts to contact housing association Orbit South, Ms Howsam told News Shopper she has had to live with the damage for nine weeks.

The Brook Street resident said: "Since this happened, I was told on three occasions that someone would fix it.

"If I had not gone upstairs to bed when my ceiling collapsed, it would’ve killed me.

"Now I feel extremely scared that the whole ceiling will, one day, fall down completely - I have four grandchildren who sometimes visit me and it’s ridiculously unsafe in my house.

"I take pride in my home and for these last nine weeks I’ve lived like a tramp - it’s horrible."

The damaged ceiling when it fell down.

Ms Howsam says she has called the association, on numerous occasions asking for her ceiling to be repaired but has been cancelled on twice before a plumber was mistakenly sent to help.

The mum-of-two, who works as a waitress, claims to have lost out on £160 due to taking three days off of unpaid work.

She added: "At first, water was leaking through my ceiling when it collapsed so a plumber came round the next day to fix a pipe.

"On September 1, the council sent another plumber to come and repair the ceiling and he said to me ‘I can’t do this‘ and walked off.

"A week later, someone else was meant to visit but I got a text telling me I had to reschedule for another day.

"It’s now approaching the ninth week with nothing fixed so I spoke to a surveyor and he told me that he had all the plans to repair it.

"I was shocked because how could he have any plans when he hadn’t been here to see the damage?

"He then informed me that he was going on holiday so I would have to wait another two weeks for any work to be done."

An Orbit South spokesman said: "We sincerely apologise to Ms Howsam for any inconvenience the delay has caused.

"There has been an unacceptable delay in getting the ceiling work completed.

"We have been working with our partner contractor to ensure this is resolved as quickly as possible and expect the repair to be ceiling work to be started this afternoon (20 October)."