A woman who accidentally fell to her death from the sixth floor balcony of a Hackney council block was trying to fix a blocked drainpipe that had been repaired using “heavy duty tape”, a coroner has found.
Sarah McGreevy, 37, died on 16 June after climbing on to a wooden box on the balcony to manually unblock the pipe, a common practice among residents of the fifth and sixth floors of the building after heavy rainfall, according to the coroner’s report.
McGreevy, who was described as a “treasured daughter” and a “loving sister” by her family, was renting a flat in a building owned by the London borough of Hackney.
After her landlord, the leaseholder of the flat, told the coroner no repairs had been carried out on the building’s drainpipes or guttering since McGreevy’s death, the coroner, Sarah Bourke, warned Hackney council, the freeholder of the premises, that there was a risk of future deaths unless action was taken.
She told the east London borough to respond to the findings of her report by 1 January.
“In my opinion action should be taken to prevent future deaths and I believe you and your organisation have the power to take such action,” the coroner wrote to the operations director of the Hackney council’s tenancy and homeowner services.
“Photographs taken of Ms McGreevy’s hands following her death show dirt around her fingernails consistent with undertaking a cleaning task. I found that it was more likely than not that Ms McGreevy had climbed on to the wooden box to clear the pipe and had accidentally fallen over the balcony,” she wrote.
Police officers who attended the scene found the wooden box on the balcony and noted that McGreevy’s mobile phone was on a window ledge, close to a downwards drainpipe.
The pipe came from the floor of the balcony above her two-bed flat before diverting down the exterior wall, and had previously been repaired using heavy duty tape.
The inquest concluded that “it was more likely than not” that McGreevy had climbed on to the wooden box to clear the pipe and had accidentally fallen over the balcony, sustaining fatal injuries due to the height of her fall.
Police were told that other residents had been having problems with the guttering and drainpipes in the block and were unblocking the pipes themselves, a practice that the coroner said carried a clear risk of falling.
Yet months after McGreevy’s death, no work has been undertaken by the Labour-run council to unblock the guttering or the drainpipes, Bourke’s report revealed.
“In the absence of remedial works, the practice of residents unblocking pipes themselves is likely to continue,” the coroner warned.
A spokesperson for the council said: “This is a tragic case and our thoughts are with the friends and family of Sarah McGreevy.
“The coroner has detailed a number of issues for us to consider in her Prevention of Future Deaths report.
“We do not expect anyone living in a Hackney council home to clean their own guttering and like the coroner we want to ensure an incident like this doesn’t happen again. We will be carefully going through her report and responding as quickly as possible.”
A funeral notice described McGreevy as a “treasured daughter”, a “loving sister” and a “dearest niece, cousin and friend who will be truly missed”.
The notice requested that instead of flowers, donations be made to the Macari Centre, an organisation committed to helping end homelessness in Stoke-on-Trent.
