Barrhead tenants' housing plea to East Renfrewshire Council

Three neighbours who live in Wraes Avenue in the Dunterlie area of the town have spoken out about the reported poor living conditions their families are facing.

Among them is Maggie Foreman who lives in the street with her sons, aged 13 and 8, and her daughter aged 10.

She says her middle child was rushed into hospital after collapsing in the middle of the night.

The 37-year-old, who has lived at the property for about eight years, told the Barrhead News: “She was out and blue in the face. The hospital said they couldn’t find anything the matter with her but I would say it was the dampness. Behind her bed is black with damp.

“The house is a riot. It’s not fair for the weans.

“There’s water coming down every one of the bedroom (walls) and down my living room you can see water dripping.

“I’ve got plasterwork to get done and they have not come back and done it.

“They’ve taken most of my wall back to the brick wall but there are wires hanging out of my wall. They have been exposed for about six months."

“I’ve got a leak in my kitchen and they have just left my ceiling like that as well and there’s damp down the bottom of my stair and damp in my toilet," she added.

“I would just like the work to get done in the house.”

Her downstairs neighbour Claire McKechnie fears that it will take someone getting “seriously hurt” before something will be done to address the problems they are facing.

The 39-year-old who lives with her husband Alan 40, and two children aged 11 and 14, said: “We are a four in a block. The water running down the walls upstairs is blowing everything in, so the amount of cookers and other stuff my neighbour has had to go through is just ridiculous.

"The mould in my kitchen is a pain in the backside because it's actually in my pots cupboard, but luckily we don't have any of the electrical problems that upstairs have because that would absolutely do me in."

“There is also a problem with the gutter at the back. The guttering literally just flows down the wall, so that's causing dampness in my daughter’s room on one side," she added.

“On the other side is my neighbour’s ‘bin shed’, which she’s been desperate to get rid of because it's been causing dampness at the other side of the wall in my daughter’s room.

“Their (the council’s) classic reply is always 'no, it's just condensation', which is absolutely ridiculous.”

Claire also shared the impact the conditions she claims are having on her family’s health, particularly that of her daughter, who is in secondary school.

“The poor wean can’t get heat in her room at all. She’s got a chimney wall and they’ve not closed the chimney properly and it's just constantly freezing,” she explained.

“She's in bed with a heated blanket under her and two duvets over the top of her while sitting doing her homework.

“My husband and myself are both long term ill which is obviously not helped by it, but my daughter is trying to do PE and she's just not got the stamina because obviously she’s sleeping next to this and she's always cold.”

A third neighbour speaking out is Mandy Smith, who lives with her nine-year-old daughter.

The 43-year-old first moved into her property five or six years ago, but says she is facing problems including a drain in her garden that spews “pure toilet sewage” every time it rains and a house that is “constantly freezing” due to holes in her windows left by missing latch locks.

“My house doesn’t have dampness because my brother came and scraped all my walls back to the bare brick and they were treated when we moved in, but why should we put our hand in our own pocket to fix problems the council should be fixing,” she said.

“Every other property in our cul-de-sac is riddled with dampness. People are living in these houses with their kids and their kids are getting not well all the time.

“They need to make the houses habitable for people.

“When the kids come home from school at night we all pile into one house just so we can get one heating on.”

In response to the residents’ concerns, an East Renfrewshire Council spokesperson said that they “currently have no outstanding repairs at Wraes Avenue, but staff have visited the tenants to understand any concerns they may have".

“We issue advice to all tenants about reducing condensation in their homes to help prevent mould, but as with all repair matters, it is important that if a tenant has an issue at their property, they report it to us as soon as they can," they added.