9 January 2007
A broken boiler and spiralling costs for a reputable plumber have left a Barrow widow with little choice but to live without heating for the past six weeks, according to the North-west Evening Mail.
Dorothy Duckett, 59, told the paper that she had begun to feel dangerously depressed by the lack of heating and the worry over how to pay for the repairs.
Although she is entitled to a government grant as part of the Warm Front campaign – which provides widows, widowers, pensioners, single mothers and other vulnerable consumers with a cash injection to help pay for heating charges – the cost of repairing her boiler will exceed that grant by £600.
Thankfully, the Royal British Legion came to her aid and topped up the government's £2,700 donation to the required £3,300, but Mrs Duckett claims she is still waiting for an engineer.
Jean Smith, a single mother from Barrow, has also been suffering, having been forced to pay around £900 in excess costs and been left waiting for 3 days for Warm Front engineers to fix her boiler.
"It's ridiculous," she told the paper. "Three days is not acceptable with a baby in the house. Other gas companies would not do that."
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