18 January 2007
A Barnet mother is to sue her local housing trust after repeated calls to them to fix her boiler were ignored, resulting in her suffering an electric fault when a faulty heating device overflowed.
Silvia Cusse, 35, spent nearly a month chasing her landlords to send someone to repair her faulty boiler and when an engineer was finally dispatched, the work turned out to be a case of too little to late.
Despite the repairs, when the house's fuses blew, the water that had leaked from the boiler caused Ms Cusse to suffer an electric shock.
She told the Barnet Times: "An engineer came at the end of December and fixed the leak, but did not put the light back up or fully fix the boiler. The trip-switch kept going down and I had to put it back on.
"On January 7th, I went to turn the switch on again, but I got blown off the chair. I had a pain in my chest and had to go to Barnet Hospital.
"Now I have been in the house for more than a week because of the pain I have had in my chest. I do not want to be alone in the street if I get those pains again. I am planning to sue the Metropolitan Housing Trust (MHT)," Ms Cusse concluded.
A spokesperson for the MHT told the paper that its residents' safety was its top priority and that the housing association would fully investigate what happened to Ms Cusse and keep her informed of its progress.
The spokesperson also confirmed that a full gas and electricity safety check had been carried out prior to Ms Cusse moving into the house two years ago.
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