'I can't eat': Telford family go six weeks with horrible stink from broken toilet
A family of three are living with a horrible stench coming from the broken bathroom toilet at their rented Telford home - which they say is making them miss out on family time.
Linda and Stuart Williams and their son Simon live in a bungalow in St George's, which they rent from housing association Bromford Housing.
For the last six weeks they have been manually filling up their toilet with water, and have been putting up with the horrible stench around the house.
"I can't eat that much because of the smell in the bungalow," Linda said.
"It doesn't matter how many bottles of bleach we use it's not going away."
The 55-year-old mum said she was particularly concerned because her husband is asthmatic and has sarcoidosis, a condition which causes swollen tissue to develop in the organs, affecting the lungs, lymph nodes and skin.
Her 17-year-old son Simon is also asthmatic and has autism. He is due an operation in hospital soon, but doctors say they won't allow him to return home until the toilet is fixed, to prevent infection.
Not only that, but Linda said the smell has left her feeling depressed – she wants to get out of the house all the time – and said family don't want to visit her because they also cannot bear it.
Stuart added: "It costs twice as much to live at the minute as we eat out a lot and windows have to stay open so heating just goes out of the window – also, we have not seen our grandkids for six weeks."
On Friday last week, Bromford Housing issued a statement about the status of the toilet repair. Kevin Bennett, director of localities and customer contact said: “We’re sorry that it has taken so long to resolve the issues with Mr and Mrs Williams’ toilet, but we expect to have it fixed in the next few days.
"When we attended their home last month, we realised we needed a specialist part which we had to order and offered a temporary fix to have the water to flush the toilet supplied from the main water supply but the family declined this.
"Whilst we have been waiting for the part we should have kept them updated on the status of their repair which we failed to do.
“We are now in regular contact with the family to keep them updated about the repair and visited their home this week. We will be returning again early next week when we aim to complete the repair.”
