Croydon residents trapped without heating for months in gas safety dispute

Samantha Banner is six months pregnant and has not had hot water in her flat since early March. She washes by filling a bucket with kettle-boiled water, or uses a camping shower when she can manage it. Her partner does the same. They are leaseholders at Admiral Court, a mixed-tenure development in Croydon, south London, where all 65 flats lost their gas supply on 4 March after engineers discovered what they described as potentially dangerous leaks in the pipework.

The building was completed in 2019 by a developer called UK Land Assets. That company has since gone into liquidation. When the gas was shut off, no one moved quickly to fix it. Instead, residents found themselves caught between the freeholder, a housing association, managing agents, and the memory of a developer that no longer exists—each entity pointing at the others, each claiming the responsibility belonged elsewhere. Six months passed. Then seven. No one could say clearly who would pay to replace the pipework, or whether that cost might eventually land on the residents themselves.

Zainab Ottun bought a 25 percent share of her £310,000 flat in 2019, thinking it would be a stepping stone to something larger. She was among the first residents to move in. Over the years, she watched the gas get cut off and restored multiple times as engineers found weaknesses in the infrastructure. When it was switched off in March, she was recovering from Achilles surgery and using crutches. She washed herself with a bucket. "You don't buy a new build expecting it to crumble right before your eyes as you're living in it," she said. She cannot sell the flat now. No buyer will touch it.

Akira Pascall works as a paediatric nurse. She lives in the building with her partner and three-year-old son in a shared ownership flat. After long shifts, she comes home and fills a camping shower with water heated in a kettle. Her son cannot have a proper bath. She is angry not just about the inconvenience but about the suggestion that residents might have to pay for the repairs themselves. "This is meant to be affordable housing," she said. "If we had that much money to re-pipe a building we would build our own block of flats."

In August, five months after the gas was cut, an expert witness report commissioned by the freeholder found that the pipework had not been installed to the standards set by the Institution of Gas Engineers and Managers. The freeholder, Groundinvest 101 Limited, began contacting companies it said were associated with the original developer, trying to recover the cost. The managing agent, Warwick Estates, acknowledged that residents face a difficult situation but claimed that under the terms of the lease, the gas pipes are the direct responsibility of individual leaseholders. It also said the defects are not covered by the building's warranty. The agent said it was seeking expert advice on installing electric heating and hot water in each flat, and hoped to have costs and timelines available within weeks.

Samantha and her partner were preparing to exchange contracts on a larger family home when their buyer pulled out. The buyer cited both the rising service charges and the ongoing gas problem. "We are in absolute limbo," Samantha said. "We can't put it back on the market because of the situation with the gas." She said there is still no clear timeframe for restoration. "It's going to be expensive, I get it, but no-one is claiming any liability on it. We're just left waiting for them to make their decisions."

The Leasehold Knowledge Partnership, a charity that advises leaseholders, says there are too many cases like this one. Martin Boyd, from the charity, points out that since the Grenfell fire, it has become clear that "the law is still stacked against the leaseholders who have a limited means of redress for building defects." Leaseholders have no legal right to survey a building before they buy, so they have no way of knowing whether a site has problems. The charity has called on the government to strengthen warranty schemes on new developments. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said the situation at Admiral Court is "completely unacceptable" and urged those responsible to carry out the work urgently. It pointed to its Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill as a step toward stronger protections, including making commonhold the default tenure for new flats so residents have full ownership and control from the outset.

Croydon Churches Housing Association, which is the leaseholder of 22 apartments in the building, has moved some tenants into alternative accommodation, provided electric heaters, and offered temporary electric showers. It has given shared ownership leaseholders vouchers for essential items and offered to cover additional electricity costs. But for residents like Samantha, there remains no clear timetable for when the issues might be resolved. The building stands as a case study in how quickly a new development can fail, and how little recourse residents have when it does.