A Croydon mum has said she feared her house could have ‘burnt down’ after she was left waiting for an emergency call out for nearly five days.

The delay has also left her with a washing machine full of ‘horrendous smelling’ clothes, which she cannot remove.

Trevvena Prince, 44, of New Addington feels this recent experience is symptomatic of the wider treatment her housing association, Home Group, give to their tenants.

She told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS): “I told them they need to review their health and safety measures because as far as I’m concerned they are zero.”

Late in the evening of Saturday, November 2, Trevenna and her friend came home from work to find that her electricity had been cut off throughout her house.

After going through and switching off each appliance one by one, they realised the washing machine was tripping out while halfway through a cycle. 

With some effort, they managed to pull the washing machine away from the wall to find that the prongs of the plug had been burnt out.

The socket also showed clear signs that it had sparked out and was accompanied by a burning smell.

Concerned about her 20-year-old daughter sleeping unaware upstairs, Trevenna was forced to leave the house for safety.

However, she feels Homegroup did not respond to the situation with the urgency it required. 

She said: “We took pictures of the plug but they said it wasn’t a priority and to call back when it was normal hours. I rang back on Monday morning to report it and they said they would pass it over to a contractor.

“On Wednesday I still hadn’t heard anything, so I rang them again and in the end, they put me on a six-hour emergency call out. I had to go to work again, I had my friend stay here to check.

“However, those six hours passed and they didn’t turn up at all. I rang them six hours after that time and they didn’t respond. Eventually, they put me on another emergency six-hour call-out.”

Home Group sent an electrician during the second emergency call-out period. Trevenna told the LDRS of her shock when he told her of the severity and extent of her issue. 

She said: “His first words to me were “Wow, when did this happen?

I told him Saturday and he said “I can’t believe they’ve left this with you until now. This is a high hazard, with one spark it could have set alight.”

The electrician eventually found burnt-out wiring behind the plug to be the cause of the spark. Angered by this new knowledge, Trevenna called Home Group and told them of her concerns. 

She said: “Originally, I was told I wasn’t going to get an appointment till November 8. I rang back and kicked off, I said you left my family at high risk, the property could have been in danger.

“I told them they need to review their health and safety measures because as far as I’m concerned they are zero. They were very apologetic but that doesn’t cut it, why did you leave my family in danger?

“If I wasn’t persistent in trying to get them out we could have still been waiting till November. It’s not like I had a broken toilet or fence, this could properly put us in danger.”

“These houses are plasterboard, so if this had caught alight the next one would too and the whole road would go up.”

Trevenna told the LDRS how this recent experience echoed previous engagements with Home Group, which have seen her waiting for essential repairs around the house. She spoke of one example where she was made to wait over two years for a new back door after her old one was hanging from its hinges. 

She said: “They changed over to new repairs suppliers and during that time they told me your new door is in a container somewhere. So in the end I withheld six months’ rent until they eventually gave me the new door.

“They are not good on the repair side. This is how far you have to go, I don’t want to do it.”

In the meantime, Trevvena’s washing machine sits in the middle of her kitchen, unable to be used until the plug socket is fixed. It contains a full load of washing that has been sitting in stagnant water, which has a smell that hits you as soon as you walk through the door.

Trevvena told the LDRS: “The smell’s horrendous and I’m currently without a washing machine. At least I’ve got good neighbours.”

When approached for comment, Beau Rickerby, Head of Maintenance at Home Group said: “We sympathise with the issues our customer has been facing, and the time taken to resolve them. We take all reports of repairs seriously and we can see the jobs were raised and have now been carried out.

 “We are always looking closely at our repairs process to minimise delays and ensure we can provide the support our customers expect of us.

“Our contractor would not have been able to directly fix the washing machine as it was a privately owned appliance. However, the door mechanism on these devices are designed to unlock again once they are plugged back into a powered socket, which should now be working again.”