Brent Council shore up next door's doorway 2 days late - after the damage has been done

Brent Council have come around to put up scaffolding to support the front door porch brickwork. At least they now must know next door's subsidence is dangerous.

Next door's doorway falls down

After being assured earlier today that next door's doorway is safe, the opposite has just happened. Our next door neighbour has just shut their front door and a brick from the archway above the porch fell down. Luckily, it narrowly missed our neighbour's head!

Reply from Brent Council

“Further to the damage to your property and you neighbour's; Mr. Bonnar has advised that a Structural Engineer will attend your neighbours property next week, he has explained that due to the extended summer, many properties like yours and your neighbours have been affected, some have required urgent repairs with cracks reaching 60mm. This does not mean that yours and your neighbours property is not urgent however, but it has meant that the Structural engineers have had to visit a lot of homes with larger cracks. Mr. Bonnar has assured me that your neighbours front porch will not fall, and that he will ascertain why works were not carried out yesterday.”

Cracks appear above next door's porch

We have informed the council that cracks have appeared above next door's porch. They have told us they will send someone to see them.

In the following months

We put in a claim with our insurance company and quickly got into a catch22 situation. Who was to blame? As the problem was due to subsidence of our next door property our insurers initially said that we weren't insured for it. We had to get surveyors in to prove that next door was to blame and not our property. It took many months for this to be established.

In the meantime all our complaints to the council were falling on deaf ears. Each time we contacted them we were fobbed off onto a different department.