'It's driving us mad' - pensioners at Harborough retirement complex have been left without water on a few occasions during lockdown

An outraged Market Harborough pensioner has blasted housing chiefs after repeatedly having her water cut off.

The 80-year-old woman said she’s at her wits end after losing all her running water at her flat on a retirement complex three times in the last month.

And the furious widow said her elderly neighbours have also been hit by the freak problems at Brooklands Gardens, off Walcot Road, Harborough.

Landlord Platform Housing has now apologised to angry residents as engineers battle to resolve the infuriating issues.

The distraught grandmother, who didn’t want to be named, told the Harborough Mail: “We are all absolutely sick and fed-up.

“It’s bad enough suddenly losing your water once.

“But to lose it time and again is terrible – and it’s driving us all mad.”

The tenant, who’s lived there over 20 years, said they first lost their water on Monday March 23 – the day the Covid-19 lockdown was imposed.

“We were off all day before an engineer came out and our supply was restored.

“Our water went again out of the blue at about 9am on Sunday April 19.

“We managed to get it back at 3pm that afternoon,” said the fuming OAP, who has three children and six grandchildren.

“But it broke down again at 7am on Monday before we were back up and running at about 2.30pm.

“We are all getting hit in the top block here – the bottom block seems fine.

“My neighbours are aged 95 and 91 – we are all elderly here, it’s supposed to be sheltered accommodation.

“My nephew went out and bought me some bottled water but this just isn’t good enough.

“It would be worrying at the best of times.

“But it’s far worse as we are all locked down in this coronavirus crisis.

“We can’t get out to queue for ages in shops for bottled water – and it wouldn’t be safe for us older ones anyway.

“We’re all supposed to be washing our hands at least five times a day, which we can’t do.

“And we haven’t got water to have a cuppa – never mind a bath or a shower.”

The tenant, who has a two-bed flat, said she rang Platform Housing, her landlord, three times on Sunday alone.

“It’s so hard to get through to anyone there.

“They told me they’d make a note of my call,” she snapped.

“What’s the point of that for goodness sake?

“We just want their engineers to come out and do a proper job and sort out this problem once and for all.

“We can’t rest because we don’t know when our water’s going to disappear again.

“It’s a very worrying time for all of us here – and there’s no one aged under 70.”

A Platform Housing spokeswoman told the Mail: “I can confirm that there remains ongoing problems with the water supply at Brooklands Gardens, Market Harborough.

“Platform Housing are extremely disappointed to find that this situation has reoccurred following on from previous recommendations and works carried out in an attempt to effect a resolution to this problem.”

She added: “We can only sincerely apologise for any inconvenience or distress that this issue continues to cause our residents.

“We have an independent Design Engineer currently working with us.

“We are doing our upmost to ascertain the root cause of these problems as soon as possible.

“But the fault is proving extremely difficult to pinpoint at this point in time.

“Rest assured that once the cause of this issue has been identified and confirmed, Platform Housing will effect remedial works to rectify the situation as soon as possible.”