After four years of horror stories of cockroaches falling on people’s heads and rats squaring up to pet dogs, residents say they have had enough
Sarah and Nick, who live at Camp St.
As soon as the door opens to the Salford apartment block, an overwhelming smell hits you. It’s a sickly, putrefying stench that sticks in the back of your throat and makes you want to cover your mouth and nose.
“It’s awful isn’t it? That’s the hallway carpet,” explained Andy Wigley, 48, a resident of the tower on Camp Street, Lower Broughton, pointing at a large stain near two maintenance room doors. “It’s been like this for months. And those are the doors that a nest of baby rats chewed through.”
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The customer advisor has lived in the block for almost 20 years, after part-buying his flat through a shared ownership scheme. But in the last five years, he says the state of the place has deteriorated.
Now he feels trapped in his own home – and he’s not the only one.
The door in the hallway after young rats chewed through the wood and carpet.
“When we first moved in it was really beautiful, like a hotel,” said Sarah Singh, 47, one of Andy’s neighbours. “Then in the last four or five years it’s gone completely downhill.”
Four of the residents spoke to the Manchester Evening News about the deterioration of the building, which is managed by Contour Property Management, a subsidiary of Onward Homes.
While the living room we meet in is immaculately kept – the list of complaints about the building is long, and the neighbours are at the end of their tether. The hallway carpet, a faulty lift, a rat infestation in the car park – which regularly encroaches into the building – and most recently, cockroaches climbing up the bin chutes and into people’s homes.
Whenever the lift breaks down, Sarah becomes stuck in her apartment.
It has been four years of hell, according to residents.
For Sarah, the biggest problem is the lift. Single parent to 10-year-old son Ryan, Sarah has serious health conditions including kidney failure and mobility issues. When the lift fails, she says she can find herself trapped in her apartment on the third floor for weeks on end because maintenance teams from Contour are so slow to respond.
She said: “I can’t go see my family, I can’t take Ryan to school, or speak to his teachers, I’m just stuck in the flat. I really affects me mentally.”
Nurses deliver medication and treatment to Sarah at home. On one occasion she missed her kidney dialysis, because operators couldn’t carry the heavy kit up three flights of stairs, Sarah said.
It also makes Sarah entirely reliant on her ten-year-old son to pick up bare essentials and takeaways. “It feels like I’m putting him at risk. What if something happens to him and I can’t get down there? I know it takes its toll on him, along with the health stuff. The other day I couldn’t sleep and I caught him coming into my bedroom. He told me: ‘I’m just checking you’re still breathing’. It broke my heart.”
But most of all Sarah is angry. Angry at the management company for letting the building deteriorate. And angry that despite chasing Contour over weeks and months, nothing gets done, according to Sarah.
Sarah is heartbroken she has to put so much responsibility on her son – but has no choice.
“If I could move tomorrow, I would,” she said.
Nick Barlow, 39, who works in hospitality, has lived in his flat for 17 years. He used to be very proud of where he lived. “Now it’s just embarrassing. In the last three days I’ve seen eight rats. I keep finding cockroaches everywhere in my apartment. But I dread going out my front door even more. But like everyone else here, I can’t afford to just up and move. And we shouldn’t have to, either, we’re paying for the building to be maintained.”
The neighbours each pay £200 a month in maintenance fees. With around 100 apartments, that amounts to £240,000 a year. Yet the building currently has no caretaker, the lobby is cleaned just twice a month, and the upstairs area just once a month, according to residents.
“They’ll do the literal bare minimum,” Andy said. “We’re not expecting it to be the Ritz. We know buildings decline over time. But we expect it to be clean and safe.
Nick Barlow, another long-term resident who is feeling frustrated with the situation.(Image: LDRS)
“The rats nest in the hallway was there for five months. Not only were they burrowing through the doors, they also chewed through the wires and the water pipes, which flooded the floor. That’s why it smells so bad – who knows what biohazards are in there. We asked them to change the carpet for health and safety reasons – but they said it’s ‘not on the refurb schedule until next year’.”
The four residents have no end of horror stories from their neighbours: a man with a wheelchair who had to be carried up three flights of stairs by his wife when the lift failed, cockroaches falling on people’s heads in the bin rooms, dogs facing off emboldened rats in the parking lot.
“I can’t take it anymore,” said the last resident, who didn’t wish to be identified. “It’s been four years of this, and now the cockroaches are pushing me over the edge. I’m tip-toeing in and out of rooms, on pins. Every time I see or hear something move, I think it’s pests. I’m constantly stressed and I just don’t know what to do.
“We’ve tried talking to Onward, we’ve set up meetings. Their management keeps changing and nothing gets done.”
A collage of cockroaches Nick has found in his flat recently.
A spokesperson for Onward Homes said: “We apologise for the distress and inconvenience that has been caused to residents of Camp Street arising from the lift breaking down and the time to source and fit specialist parts. The lift is now in full working order.
“We want to reassure residents that we are committed to tackling pests as an absolute priority. A pest control programme is underway across the whole estate, which includes a baiting programme and closure of any identified entry points. This work will continue until these issues are fully resolved. Whilst this work continues, our teams will check if customers need any additional support from us.”
The rubbish area.
They did not respond to the request from residents to replace the carpet.
The neighbours showed the MEN around the building after our conversation, which meant we have to linger for a while in the hallway, where there’s still a hole in the carpet beneath the door the rats chewed through. The smell is staggering.
“It’s actually better today,” the resident who wished to remain unnamed said. “During the heatwave it was unbearable. I was physically sick on my way in from work on Friday. We shouldn’t have to live like this.”