Rainham Orchard Village homeowners get buyback offer

One resident said the Housing Association sent workmen to repair a ceiling suffering from damp but they left the job half done

The housing association in charge of a "poorly-built" housing estate in east London has offered to buy back dozens of the properties.

Residents of Orchard Village, in Rainham, said they have had to deal with a range of problems, including raw sewage, mice, and gas leaks.

The association which manages the estate, Clarion Housing, has offered to buy back 58 of the 387 homes.

It admitted the situation was "unacceptable".

Clarion took over the estate when it bought original property developer Circle Homes two months ago.

Call to demolish

Orchard Village, where a two-bedroom flat costs about £250,000, was opened in 2014.

Built partly using £31m of public money, the £80m estate replaced the "notorious" Mardyke housing estate.

Colin Nickless, who moved into the estate in September 2015 to be near a special school for his daughter, who has cystic fibrosis, said: "My son's bedroom had wastewater going through from the leaking waste pipe. We had roof leaks, leaks from the bath coming out.

"Subsequently then we had mould and damp growing."

Several residents have complained about damp in their properties

"My daughter picked up a bacterial infection, she spent many weeks in hospital. My son has also been admitted to hospital with breathing difficulties. It's like a cycle of illness not just in my home but all across the estate.

"We call it the Orchard Village Sickness or the Orchard Village Flu".

Havering UKIP councillor Phil Martin called for the whole estate to be demolished.

"We've had a poor chap wandering about for days on sewer-soaked carpets before they did anything about it," he said.

"And of course the value of the houses has plummeted. You can't sell them at all.

"The only solution is to pull the whole lot down and start again, because all this is doing is patching up."

A spokesperson for Clarion said its dedicated project team had "already made significant progress in tackling the build defects at Orchard Village".

It said it took concerns "extremely seriously", and that the organisation had "instructed ground investigation specialists to undertake rigorous scientific tests".

Many residents complained about flooding

Correction 9 February 2017: An earlier version of this report contained a picture of what residents said was a malfunctioning fire alarm, but was actually a smoke ventilation control box in working order.