‘Everything is soaked’: Family’s ceiling collapsed after heavy storm

By Jacob Phillips, Local Democracy Reporter

A family have been forced to stay in a hotel after their ceiling collapsed after not being fixed for eight months.

Nawal Judeh Musa, who lives with her two teenage daughters, has had to put buckets out in her living room since Storm Eunice in February.

Now a huge crack has appeared in the ceiling and parts of her soaked roof have dropped into her living room.

The mum had to empty buckets of water every 10 minutes while water poured into her home in Orient Street, Elephant and Castle, during Sunday night’s storm.

Nawal claims she has been asking her housing association Notting Hill Genesis to fix the roof for months – but so far the housing association has allegedly only placed a sheet over the roof to try and temporarily stop the leaks.

Nawal said: “I’m so exhausted, I couldn’t get any sleep. When the wind blows the water comes in like a tap. The man who came to have a look last night said the sheet wasn’t even waterproof.”

“We moved a lot of stuff into the bedroom but you can’t move everything. Everything is soaked. It’s just ridiculous.”

Nawal is now having to regularly mop up her living room and empty buckets to try and protect her possessions. Her leather sofas and carpet have already been ruined by the downpours.

A dramatic leak in August led to water pouring from the bannisters on her ceiling and just half an hour of rainfall caused up to £5,000 worth of damage.

Nawal said: “I called [Notting Hill Genesis] to ask them to disconnect the electricity but they said they had too many emergency calls to take. It felt like nobody cared.

“I was having to go from leak to leak. I was soaked. All the buckets were full. They had the chance to repair it when the weather was better. It was leaking before but it was only like a drop.”

After the Local Democracy Reporting Service wrote about the incident, Notting Hill Genesis fitted a sheet over the roof as a temporary measure.

But two months on they have not fixed the roof and water has continued to drip into Nawal’s home daily.

Videos taken by the mum shows water pouring all over the family’s furniture and her curtains are completely soaked.

The videos show Nawal’s roof caving in and one of the ceiling’s bannisters has snapped, easily allowing water to drip into the home. Another video shows water dripping out of the fluorescent lights and pouring all over bookshelves.

Over the past few months, Nawal has also found damp spreading across her ceiling. She added: “I suffer from asthma myself. I try to keep the windows open.”

A Notting Hill Genesis spokesman said: “We are sorry that the resident has had another leak at the property. This part of her property was never built as a living space, it is a car port that the resident has adapted into a living area.

“When the leak happened in August we informed the resident we would not be completing major works to the car port and further leaks may happen in future. Car ports are not designed to withstand all water penetration in the way a living space is.”

Pictured top: Nawal Judeh Musa outside her home in Imperial Wharf (Picture: Handout)