Citizens Advice asks council tenants about heating issues following Hackney estate failures

Cranston Estate. Image: Google

Shoreditch residents have been asked to give evidence about their heating issues months after three Hackney estates reported persistent failures last winter.

The Citizen has learned that the support service has begun researching people’s experience of their district heat networks in the borough’s south.

This comes after the Citizen reported earlier this year that more than 450 households across three Hackney council estates in the area may have been affected for months by hot water and heating outages.

Resident Michelle Drummond said she and other tenants had reported similar issues for years, but each time staff has said it was “the first time the council was hearing about it”.

The failures, affecting Cranston Estate, Cropley Court and Thaxted Court, date back to 2019, when one of the affected blocks’ boiler houses broke down.

The latest bout of problems persisted into the new year, as an FoI request found that in February only three of the network’s 10 boilers were currently operating.

This week, there were reports of hot water failures across Cranston Estate, Halstead Court and other blocks.

Another resident, Elaine, told the Citizen she had contacted the council in December asking why the boiler house problems hadn’t been addressed in the summer.

She said staff replied to her explaining that this was because the system was working well at the time.

“I told them this wasn’t true – the water wasn’t anywhere near temperature,” she said. “I was furious.”

District heat networks supply consumers through a network of underground pipes carrying hot water. The heat is brought into the building by a heat exchanger’ which according to the government is, for a residential connection, about the same size as a small gas boiler.

Between October and November, the system suffered three outages due to burst heat exchangers and, in one case, an automatic safety shutdown, but the council said it was able to rectify these failures on the same day.

In a letter to residents sent in March, strategic director of housing services, Steve Waddington, revealed that despite ward councillors raising concerns about the outages in the run up to winter, the officers had been “of the opinion” the network would be able to cope.

“It is clear this assumption was incorrect, as has been borne out by recent breakdowns,” he wrote.

In March, Mr Waddington told the Citizen: “Unfortunately our assessment was wrong and we have apologised to residents for this.”

“By the end of April, there will be eight boilers supporting the network to help ensure it can meet the demand placed on it at peak times and cope with any future breakdowns.”

He added that the minimum number of boilers required to supply heating and hot water across the network depended on the demand.

Hackney Council said it was “working hard to provide a long-term replacement for the system”.

In December, the borough’s property services told residents they would be carrying out a ‘feasibility study’ to look at options for the entire network, the results of which would be known by the end of February.

The council has completed but not published this report, due to its reviewing its findings.

In February, the council announced it was seeking a new contractor to design, build, operate and maintain a major heat network serving over 1,300 homes, including on the Colville Estate, and other public buildings.

The Citizen understands that Colville residents have also reported persistent problems with their district heat networks since 2019.

Citizens Advice plans to use its research to improve its “new” Heat Networks Advice service.

Citizens Advice told the Citizen the research was not specific to Hackney but was geared towards improving user experience of its advice services.

The Citizen asked how frequently the organisation was receiving complaints about district heat networks, and how often these were around design and maintenance issues. Citizens Advice declined to comment.”

The organisation’s local bureau for Hackney, Citizens Advice East End – which operates independently from the national organisation – was asked by the Citizen about any communications it had with the local authority and tenants and residents’ associations over the management of district heating.

At the time of writing, the branch had not responded.

To take part in Citizens Advice’s research, residents affected by the Shoreditch Heat Network can request a call with the support service to register their interest by 30 June.

Update: this article was amended at 2.24pm on 16 June 2025 following clarifications from Citizens Advice.