A 58-year-old North London childminder has said she fears ongoing lift outages on her estate will have a serious impact on her livelihood.
By Ben Lynch
A 58-year-old North London childminder has said she fears ongoing lift outages on her estate will have a serious impact on her livelihood. Jayne White, who has lived on the York Way Estate in Islington for around 25 years, said she is losing money as a childminder as a result of the faults.
If they persist, she is worried she may lose her business, saying: “Who is going to come to me on the fourth floor with no lift?”
A spokesperson for the City of London Corporation, which is Ms White’s landlord and the site’s freeholder, said the safety and comfort of residents is a ‘top priority’ and that it is sorry they are being inconvenienced. The Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) has written previously on issues at the York Way Estate.
These have ranged from power outages – with one person saying they were refused drinking water by the Corporation despite none running in their block – to problems with mice and mould.
York Way is one of several estates the Corporation owns and manages outside of the Square Mile. Others include the William Blake Estate in Lambeth and the Sydenham Hill Estate in Lewisham.
Ms White, who lives on the fourth floor in one of the estate’s towers, is an ‘Outstanding’ childminder as rated by Ofsted. She has been a childminder the whole time she has lived on York Way, and said she has previously received work via the estate office.
She said she normally looks after three kids in her flat during the week, though said the worsening condition of the lifts is posing a risk to her livelihood. She is self-employed, and so any missed work or additional costs hit her directly in her pocket.
While there have been issues with the lifts across the estate for several years, she said the last four months have been particularly bad. “It wasn’t a usual thing they were both out together, it was a very rare event. Now it’s constant.”
On the day the LDRS visited both of the lifts in Ms White’s block were out of order. There is a stairwell to get up to her floor, though Ms White said there have been ongoing problems with its cleanliness, including urination.
She said that during a recent outage a parent had to cancel. On another occasion, she had to hire a childminder to help her take buggies down the stairs, which again meant she was losing money.
“If I’m in and they break, I’m trapped, we can’t get out,” she said. “The parents then have to carry their buggies and their kids up and down the stairs and pay for the privilege to do that.”
Referencing an occasion when she was forced to use the stairwell she said: “My God, the smell of urine and the filth, it was disgusting. But of course I don’t ever see that because I use the lift.”
Ms White said she has raised the condition of the stairwell with the Corporation, though was told they had recently been cleaned. Her concerns extend beyond her own work, in particular to the elderly and disabled residents who struggle to leave their homes when the lifts are out.
Ms White said she has queried when the lifts are to be replaced rather than repeatedly fixed and that she was assured they are part of a five-year plan. The timeframe however raises further fears about the impact on her profession. She said: “I could be unemployed [in that time]. Who is going to come to me on the fourth floor with no lift?”
“What’s the government shouting for at the minute?” Ms White added. “Childcare. Everywhere. If you’ve got councils that aren’t maintaining their properties; most of us who are childminders live in council properties.”
A City of London Corporation spokesperson said: “The safety and comfort of our residents is a top priority, and we are sorry that they are being inconvenienced. We are aware that one lift is currently out of service at Lambfold House. Officers are working with contractors to rectify the issue, and a refit is scheduled for Thursday, January 23. The second lift in the building is operational.”
