Hove family left desperate as ceiling collapses from heavy rain

Luke Brown, who lives with four-year-old son Casey and wife Marella at a flat in Hangleton, have now been forced to abandon their living room. 

He says the collapse was due to a hole in their roof, caused by a storm in December 2020 when tiles and the fascia were lost.

The ceiling then collapsed during recent bad weather leaving a massive, gaping hole.

Luke said that he fears for his son’s health with the amount of mould on the wall and that the family are unable to plan for Christmas as they have no timescale for when the repairs will be made.

He said: “It has been two years now and we’ve not got to the point where we’ve got a gaping hole in the roof, it’s freezing cold and whenever it rains, there’s water pouring inside.

“We are supposed to have family over for Christmas but we don’t know what the situation is going to be."

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The situation has caused the family significant stress, with Luke checking the weather forecast regularly in case there is a chance of rain.

He said: “When it was raining hard, I was up all night and didn’t sleep. I’m on the Met Office website every five minutes to check what the forecast is.

“I’ve had no timeline and, to rub salt in the wound, an emergency council worker visited, only for him to say ‘I’ve been asked to bring some buckets to stop the leak’.

“No one seems to be taking it seriously and I’m fed up with the constant mistakes.”

The ceiling of the family's living room collapsed onto electrical equipment (Image: Luke Brown)

Luke contacted his landlord on the day of the initial damage.

His landlord then contacted the council, as they own the building, to ask them to come and have a look at the roof and carry out any necessary repairs.

However, it wasn’t until February this year that Luke spotted scaffolding going up around his house.

Luke said: “I assumed that meant they were going to come and fix the roof and have a look at the damage.

“Two months later, though, I woke up in the morning to find the scaffolding being taken back down.

“I went outside to speak to them and they said to me that they’d been advised by the council that the job had been completed.

“You could clearly see the tiles hadn’t been replaced - nothing had been done.”

Luke and Marella Brown (Image: Luke Brown)

As the city got hit by heavy rain last month, Luke said dampness in the living room was getting significantly worse.

He said: "The wall was discoloured and there was mould running down the wall.

“I contacted my landlord again a few weeks later on November 24 because there were significant cracks running across the length of the ceiling.

“Later that day, the ceiling collapsed down onto all of our electrics and our television.”

Thankfully, no one was in the room when the ceiling collapsed, but Luke said that someone could easily have been hurt.

However, Luke is worried about the family that live below them in the building, with their son’s bedroom directly below the leak.

The wall near the hole in the ceiling is damp and growing mould, Luke said (Image: Luke Brown)

Councillor Dawn Barnett, who represents the family’s ward, said she is “sick to death” of such issues going unrepaired for long periods of time.

She said: “The council should be jumping through hoops to put this right. They are dreading more rain and it’s bitterly cold for them.

“The council initially kept blaming Covid, but they’re now 10,000 repairs behind.”

A Brighton and Hove City Council spokesman said: “The recent extremely wet weather has led to a major spike in roof repair requests. We’re sorry that this has led to a few delays in responding to much-needed repairs.

“We have had a recent report of the leaking roof at 39 Barnet Way. Our repairs staff have visited the property to inspect the roof and make the ceiling and electrics in the flat safe.

“Scaffolding is due to go up on Monday and, weather permitting, we will be starting work on repairing the roof next Wednesday.

“We’ve left buckets with the resident to prevent any further damage in the flat in case of further heavy rain before the repairs are complete.

“We’d like to reassure residents we’re treating all roof reports as a priority and will get to them as soon as we can.”