Hurlford council tenant left without heat for a week

Jul 9 2008

A COUNCIL tenant has been waiting for a fortnight for bungling council workers to fix his faulty gas boiler.

Nurse Scott Thomson, 42, reported the fault at his Hurlford home on June 27, and is still without gas central heating, and more importantly hot water.

Scott, a renal dialysis nurse at Crosshouse Hospital, said: "This is a ridiculous length of time to wait for the council workers to do their jobs.

"I’ve told them if the unit I worked in at the hospital was run the way they do things, people would die as a result. I’ve had to chase them every step of the way."

Scott lives in the four-bedroom house in Cessnock Avenue with his partner, her teenage son, and his two teenage daughters.

Scott added: "My partner and I both work as do my oldest daughter and her son. Having no hot water when we are all trying to get ready for work has been a nightmare.

"I am a nurse and I have to be hygenically clean, so it hasn’t been an easy fortnight."

Scott was told initially that his boiler needed a part, then waited in on his day off work for a council worker who was supposed to be fixing the fault.

But when he arrived he told Scott what he already knew, the boiler needed a part!

Scott said: "It was total waste of a day and it’s been over a week since they first said the part would be here. I spoke to them again on Tuesday and they said the part would have to be ordered from Gloworm and it would be here some time this week – I’m not holding my breath though.

"The service they provide is diabolical."

A council spokesman said on Tuesday that the part had arrived and it would be fitted as a matter of urgency. The spokesman added the family had been offered a water heater but had refused to take it.