Leaseholder calls police after Hackney Council workmen remove her security gates
Gateless: Ann Courington outside her flat. Photograph: Benjamin Mortimer
When Ann Courington returned from the doctor one day to find her metal security gates being taken away in an unmarked van, she was so worried that she called the police.
“I came back and saw the gates had gone,” Ms Courington said. “There were these two guys hanging around with a van and I asked them ‘have you taken my gates?’
“They said they had them in the van but that they had come from Hackney Council. I reported it to the police, who gave me a crime number, but they said it was a civil matter.”
Ms Courington, a retired science teacher, has lived in her block of flats in Clapton for thirty years. She bought her flat under the Right to Buy scheme and installed the security gate following a burglary.
Hackney Homes, which manages the block, said they had sent several letters warning that the gates would be removed on safety grounds and that since the contractors were not entering Ms Courington’s property their workmen were not obliged to identify themselves.
A spokesman for Hackney Homes said: “We carried out a fire risk assessment which found that the metal gates put up across the communal balcony outside the property would delay anyone trying to get out or in if there was a fire or other emergency. The gates also blocked off communal areas and service pipes to the block.
“We are legally obliged to comply with our own fire risk assessments and guidance provided by our risk assessors. The gates were removed by contractors working for Hackney Homes.”
Have Hackney Homes carried out a fire risk on the front doors that they have installed on their properties?The fire brigade attended a fire at a home on this street and were unable to gain entry to the flat because of the burglar proof door on the hackney homes property.
I hope they gave her the gates back since they are her property. She paid for them they are her scrap metal not the councils.
No, they did not return the gate or reimburse my mother for the price of the gate.
Following a letter sent from Hackney Homes, my mother asked a member of the fire brigade to assess whether the gate was a fire risk. It was concluded, as long as the gate remained unlocked when the flat was occupied, the gate was not seen as a fire risk.
Of course, Hackney Homes didn’t care for this information and still took the gate down.
They did not give my mother any warning of when this would happen and in regards to the “communal areas”, my mothers flat is the only flat on her floor.
AND
The only people using this “communal area” prior to the fixing of the gate, were youths (some of which lived on the estate) smoking cannabis and hurling abuse at my mother, which Hackney Homes did nothing about.
Sorry to hear about your mum, my neighbour has been burgled recently and I will not leave anything to chance, I am getting gates installed end of, if Hackney try to remove my gates I will sue!
Please take these gates down ..hackney looks like a prison !!! I’ve lived here 50 yrs and never been burgled