Tower block residents face fifth day without water

Beetham Tower is home to residential flats and a hotel

Dozens of residents of a Birmingham tower block remain without running water, despite building management promising repairs are underway to fix the five-day outage.

People living on the upper floors of Beetham Tower at 10 Holloway Circus say there has been little to no supply since Saturday.

Building management company Rendall & Rittner apologised and said two new pumps would be delivered and installed, with work expected to take six to eight hours.

But Andrew Fitch, 52, who said he was forced to book a hotel for a night, said residents had "little faith" the issue would be resolved soon.

"Not sure if they are trying to do a patch job to get it working for it to fail again," he said.

He estimated there were more than 100 flats affected by the outage.

Andrew Fitch is one of the residents with no water

Dr Hillary Jiang, 30, said toilets were full, and trying to flush them with five-litre bottles of water was not effective.

"Staining and odour have already developed and cleaning is impossible. How are residents expected to maintain sanitation and hygiene under these conditions?"

She said she was "dehydrated" as she had been limiting her water intake "to avoid using unsanitary toilets" and the situation had forced her to work from home and miss a board meeting.

"Who will take responsibility for the mental and professional impact?" she added.

"The pump repair or replacement must now be treated as an immediate emergency, not as an administrative process waiting for multiple quotes.

"We're living in this condition and they're not putting their feet in our shoes."

Another resident, Sherry Sanga, described the situation as "horrendous". "We live in the penthouse so will probably be the last to get any water," she added.

Sherry Sanga has had no water since Saturday

The management said the planned installation of new pumps was intended to permanently restore the water supply, "assuming no secondary issues arise".

They said bottled water was being distributed at reception and residents had been given information on how to claim for alternative accommodation or expenses, although some residents have disputed this.

Floors 20 to 37 of the mixed-use high-rise are private apartments, while the lower floors operate as a hotel, which has been unaffected by the outage.

The lower five floors of flats have also been unaffected.