A disabled ex-Army doctor living in West London has endured a winter shivering with intermittent heating and hot water, alleging the building's landlord has failed to implement a permanent solution.
Terry Cyrille, 55, who served in Iraq as a combat medic, has battled life-threatening cancer and other severe illnesses in what doctors described as 'a miracle', though he remains severely disabled.
He claims his West London flat, in a building owned and managed by housing association L&Q, has been dangerously cold at times, with no hot water for personal hygiene. This poses a significant health risk to Terry, who requires regular cleaning of an open wound and has a compromised immune system following his cancer treatment.
He told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS): “I have a weak immune system because of how serious the cancer was. I get ill often because of the cancer, and I need hot water to clean my wound.
“Nearly every weekend since before December either the hot water or the heating would go – and I need both. L&Q say it’ll be working within 24 hours, although this rarely happens. They just do a patch up job rather than fixing the root of the problem, they haven’t really fixed it because it keeps happening.
“Without hot water, I can’t safely shower or clean my wound. I’ve had to pay to stay in hotels, so I am paying for my rent, my bills, and then for hotels on top of that.”
Terry has lived in his flat since January 2023. As an armed forces veteran, he is supported by The Stoll Foundation – a provider of supported housing to vulnerable veterans. While the charity is his direct landlord, he has a service agreement with L&Q to maintain the building. But because he is not a direct L&Q tenant, he says they have refused to fix some issues urgently.
Terry claims that despite several attempts by both himself and The Stoll Foundation, L&Q have not added him to the out-of-hours contact list so he can be treated like any other tenant. L&Q told the LDRS it was ‘sorry to hear about the concerns’ and that he needs to contact the charity as his landlord, and L&Q will then ‘put any unresolved issues right’ – but he says he’s been trying that for months.
He told the LDRS: “When I call L&Q to tell them that I have no hot water, I have no heating, I’m cold, I can’t shower and I’ve got an open wound their call centre will say ‘we haven’t got you on our system so we can’t respond’. They don’t take my calls because I’m not on their system when I should be, so if I’ve got an emergency, no one is going to help me.”
As a result, Terry has to rely on his neighbours to support him which he is extremely grateful for. However if they are away, he has no way to contact the building management team in an emergency. He said: “Any tenant should be able to contact the out-of-hours phone line, but especially those who are vulnerable as I am. This is a service which we pay for in our service charge, which I don’t receive.”
In addition to his rent and bills, Terry pays a £50 service charge each month. This covers services such as managed car parking, CCTV, and the out-of-hours phone line. He claims when he had a valuable delivery stolen, L&Q did not respond to police requests to provide CCTV, which he says raises the question of whether it’s even operational. He also claims L&Q does not manage the parking as it should, meaning when he’s fallen ill, emergency contractors sent to help him have been ticketed because of the lack of an adequate booking system.
On the way back from a training camp in Scotland in 2017, Terry says he fell extremely ill, and underwent major surgery on his gut. Around the same time he was diagnosed with T-Cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma – a rare type of blood cancer – and he says medics told him he did not have long to live. However, in a last attempt to save his life, doctors tried a new form of stem cell therapy, and remarkably it worked.
After spending 15 months in hospital, Terry was discharged, however he remained vulnerable, poorly, and without a permanent home. The Stoll Foundation assessed Terry, and offered him the flat in Acton, meaning he could move out of his temporary accommodation in Fulham.
Angela James, Head of Housing for L&Q in North West London, said: “We’re sorry to hear about the concerns that Mr Cyrille has raised. L&Q owns this building and leases it to the Oswold Stoll Foundation. Mr Cyrille needs to contact his landlord, the Oswald Stoll Foundation, and we will work to put any unresolved issues right.”
