Thread by @MtvTenant

Fire in my apartment building. #thread. I live in a block of shared ownership flats in north London, co-owned by Metropolitan Housing Trust @MetTVH and Clarion Housing @Clarion_Group. There was a fire in my building last night. 1/10

Ten weeks ago, our landlords removed the lock to the bin store exterior door. Since then, the bin store has been open & anyone who wants to can gain access to it. Last night, someone did gain access to it, and set fire to the contents of the bin underneath the rubbish chute. 2/10

The bin smouldered & burned. The smoke travelled up the bin chute & filled the building above with smoke, up to the second floor. Our fire safety system is a series of smoke detectors. When they detect smoke they open the smoke vents so the smoke can escape from the building 3/10

The smoke vents failed to open. Resident had been reporting problems with the vents for several weeks, but as usual we were ignored. The fire safety system in our building failed when there was an actual fire, because it has not been maintained properly. Let that sink in. 4/10

Thankfully the fire brigade attended, extinguished the fire and opened the smoke vents manually. Thank-you, @LERP_LFB 5/10

Residents are always ignored. Since 2006, we have issued three sets of legal proceedings against our landlords for maintenance and repairs issues but nothing ever changes. We have to accept that @MetTVH and @Clarion_Group will never take responsibility for the building. 6/10

@Clarion_Group were censured by the Homes & Communities Agency in 2014. They were censured by the Housing Ombudsman in 2020. And yet they continue to fail their tenants. These censures mean nothing & Clarion’s incompetence meant our building nearly burned down last night. 7/10

@MetTVH owned the building that was lost in the Worcester Park fire in 2019. A block of flats burned down in minutes because fire safety was unsatisfactory. The tenants are still in temp accommodation. They lost everything. Here we are 18 months later with another fire 8/10

We could have died last night. We could have lost our homes and everything in them. There could have been life-changing injuries and untold psychological trauma. That we survived was purely down to luck. 9/10

@MetTVH & @Clarion_Group do not care whether their tenants live or die. There is no accountability, no responsibility, no transparency, no integrity, no honesty. Worse, regulators, lawyers, politicians (esp. politicians) do not care either. And that is absolutely terrifying 10/10

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