AFTER nearly four weeks struggling to get heating and hot water a St Neots family are considering legal action against their social landlord.

AFTER nearly four weeks struggling to get heating and hot water a St Neots family are considering legal action against their social landlord.

Husband and wife Jimmy and Natalie Goldsmith have battled since December 10 to get their home boiler repaired.

Twelve days after it broke down, an electrical engineer visited the couple’s Loves Farm home, but just hours later the boiler had again failed, leaving the family with no heating or hot water over Christmas and new year.

On Friday (December 31) Mr and Mrs Goldsmith returned home from a shopping trip to find a leak from the boiler – a Swedish-made appliance from eco-firm NIBE – had flooded their kitchen.

Now Mr Goldsmith, 49, is threatening to go to his solicitors to seek compensation from landlord Bedford Pilgrims Housing Association (bpha).

He said: “We came home on New Year’s Eve to discover our kitchen was flooded. A few millimetres of water had just covered the whole floor surface.

“We called bpha who said to us ‘If it has now stopped leaking, we won’t bother coming over.’

“We had two other repair men come out after Christmas. One of them said ‘I have never seen one of those boilers.’ He switched it off and on, but he did not know what to do.

“I also had a phone conversation with a person from NIBE that lasted an hour and a half. He was trying to talk me through some of the settings. At the end of the conversation he said ‘It seems like you need a new boiler.’

“They are new boilers to this country. It seems like we are guinea pigs. Our landlord has washed their hands. It has ruined our Christmas and New Year.”

The couple who moved into the Woodridge Crescent property two years ago are not the only householders to have suffered problems with the boilers. Neighbour Pawel Grygolowisz had similar difficulties three months earlier, and Bargroves Avenue resident Kristi Smith told The Hunts Post last week that she spent seven weeks with no heating or hot water after her boiler broke down.

A spokesman for bpha said a NIBE engineer had repaired and re-filled Mr Goldsmith’s boiler yesterday.

She said the company had apologised to Mr Goldsmith for the delay.

She added that the matter had been referred to Sandy-based builders Kier Partnership Homes when it was first reported before Christmas.