7:30pm Saturday 10th January 2009
A FAMILY has heating and hot water again after being left without a working boiler for more than six weeks.
It was replaced after the plight of Kerry Goddard and her two sons, one of which has asthma, appeared in the Chronicle.
Housing association, A2 Winchester, has apologised for the delay, and an engineer came to replace the boiler last Wednesday (January 7).
Radiators are now working in the two-bedroom house in Octavia Hill, Stanmore, Winchester, for the first time since late November.
Said Miss Goddard: “It’s good to have the heating back again. The children really like it as they don’t have to wear their jackets in the house anymore.”
The boiler fault coincided with the coldest start to winter in Hampshire since 1996, Met Office data has shown.
Miss Goddard, 23, a trainee legal secretary who is mother to four-year-old Tyler and three-year-old Jack, said she reported the problem to A2 several weeks ago.
While the boiler was only three years old, she said engineers found a host of problems with it just before Christmas.
They wanted to replace it instead of repairing it, but she said A2 delayed in agreeing to buy a new one.
She added that she could not contact the association between Christmas Eve and January 5 because its Winchester office was shut.
To make matters worse, emergency electric heaters supplied by A2 stopped working on New Year’s Eve, she said.
A spokeswoman for the association said: “We have not managed the situation at all well, particularly over the Christmas period when the boiler failed completely when she should have been treated as a priority.”
She added that A2 was investigating why its service failed, had apologised to Miss Goddard, and would be offering compensation.
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