Unwell Sussex woman left without heating and water for more than a week

Ms Aldridge said the situation has caused her a lot of anxiety and stress

A Sussex woman has been without heating or hot water for nine days despite repeated requests to her housing provider.

Debbie Aldridge, who lives in Lewes, has fibromyalgia, asthma and a heart condition.

She has to have a hot bath in the morning to ease her pain and has been relying on the kindness of her neighbours to use their hot water.

Southern Housing said the boiler is expected to be fixed on Wednesday.

A company spokesperson said: "We apologise to Ms Aldridge for the time it has taken to carry out the repair work to her boiler.

"We're providing temporary electrical heating to Ms Aldridge while we complete this work."

Southern Housing said a local mains water outage caused a delay in them being able to diagnose the cause of the issue.

The company said it had also had to wait for its supply chain to provide a specialist electrical part to complete the repair.

'The pain is unbearable'

Ms Aldridge said: "They need to start listening to people because there's people out there that haven't got a voice that can't keep phoning people up or haven't got the mentality to be able to do that."

She claimed to have waited on the phone for an hour to speak to the housing company and said someone came to her home when the issue first happened, but did not see anyone else until Tuesday.

Ms Aldridge labelled the situation, which she said has impacted her mental health, "disgraceful".

She said: "The pain [...] is absolutely unbearable sometimes. I do need a hot bath in the morning to ease it."

Southern Housing said its team will continue to support Ms Aldridge whilst its resolves the issue.

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