A mum has been forced to wrap up in a hat and gloves in her minus eight home after being left without heating for five months.
Tia Campbell, 23, is living in one room with her two children and partner, Michael North, 29, in attempt to keep warm.
The desperate mum has not been able to heat her home since August 2022 after experiencing issues with her boiler.
Tia has struggled to get the problem sorted and the family are still without heating five months on.
Tia Campbell, a part-time carer, from Marlborough, Wiltshire said: “I am very stressed and cold.
“It got to minus eight and it was absolutely freezing, our windows are absolutely shocking.
“My kid’s windows in their bedroom – I can fit my finger through the gap.
“I am so scared of my children touching the window because I feel as though the whole window will fall out.
“I had to spend £30 on tin foil just to try and keep my house warm and honestly, I looked like a drug dealer.”
Tia first contacted her social housing provider, Stonewall, in August after experiencing issues with her boiler.
An engineer was sent a few weeks later, who said there was nothing wrong – until the water tank blew up.
Frustration then grew for Tina and her family over Stonewater’s attempt to fix the boiler.
An engineer was sent with a part to sort it out, but it turned out that the housing provider had sent another person to check the boiler out.
Tina says Stonewater repeatedly assured her that the issue was being dealt with, but then things went quiet.
In December, the radiator in the front room of her two-bedroom house stopped working.
Once again, the issue was reported with Tia requesting a storage heater, but she says Stonewater said “it hadn’t been put through” one week after the initial phone call was made.
She said: “Nobody offered me any plug-in heaters, I was given numerous numbers, but the only thing I was offered was a food bank.
“I explained to Stonewater that we have half the hot water because half of our boiler is broken, so we only have half the amount that we should have.
“On every phone call, I mentioned the boiler issue every time but I was told that the man who was supposed to be doing it called in sick.
“It has been really stressful for us all and having to currently live in our bedrooms we are getting under each other’s feet – it is affecting our mental health.”
Tia lives with her partner, Michael North, a full-time houseman and her two children Hunter, aged four and Thomas, aged two.
She said: “We are now living in one room, we have to close doors every time we leave a room.
“It’s not fair for my children to be stuck in one room, they should be able to run around the house.
“At the age of two, you shouldn’t be told that you have to close a door to keep warm.
“It’s making me feel like a bad mum to my children, it’s bringing me so much stress.
“Coming down to make dinner, I and my partner are fighting because one of us is going to have to freeze.
“Someone has to put on a dressing gown, slippers etc, your hands are falling off because it’s so cold.”
Tia has been told that the housing association will need to fit a new storage heater, which will take place on February 23 2023 so the family of four will have to cope for another month with no heat.
She said: “They have fixed the boiler and they have fixed the water but they don’t have the heating fixed.
“We do try and sit in the living room but we only have a plug-in heater which is costing £20 a day to run it which we don’t have and as soon as we turn the heater off it gets so cold.
“We are living in my bedroom as it is warmer upstairs and we have a heater in there which is cheaper to run.
“Our children are always cold, there is only so much we can do, they are getting fed up as they are stuck in two rooms, kids need to run about but it is stressing them out being stuck together.”
A Stonewater spokesperson, said: “We are really sorry that Miss Campbell has waited so long for a repair to her heating and hot water. Looking at the history of this particular repair and the length of time it has taken it is unacceptable and not the normal standard of service our customers should expect.
“We will raise a formal complaint on behalf of the customer and look at compensation due to her based [on] the inconvenience this will have caused.
“The good news is that the repair has been completed and we can confirm that the heating and hot water are now fully working.”
