Tube Court Floods and Home Group Failure
On Friday afternoon, a dramatic flood occurred at Tube Court, a seven-story (four with flats) residential building managed by Home Group in Ouseburn Ward. This building, home to around 50 residents and about a decade old, it has a mixing of housing association tenants and some residents with shared and private ownership. In the past Home Group have been thought of as a responsive landlord although in my view this reputation has been eroded over the last couple of years in their Newcastle sites and this time, the failures have been profound.
On Saturday morning, I was alerted by a distressed resident. The communal areas across all four residential floors were flooded. In a high-rise block like this the damage can be extreme. Worse still, when residents tried to contact Home Group, no one answered. The fire brigade had to step in, cutting off water, ensuring the building wasn’t a lethal risk. Even the fire brigade attempted to contact Home Group but were cut off twice while on hold on the emergency number and when they eventually got through were told that Home Group would send someone out in 6 hours time, to which the fire brigade replied was unacceptable.
Home Group eventually acknowledged the issue and allowed residents to return, albeit with questions remaining over the safety, security and future of the building. But trust was already shattered and on Tuesday evening, a second flood struck. Once again, no prompt response from Home Group. It required intervention from myself and very helpful officers at Newcastle City Council, to alert Home Group of the emergency, which was to say the least challenging. Even after contractors had attended and were then leaving, the pipe burst again ten minutes later forcing a resident to chase the contractor down the road to tell them what had just happened.
Residents are now trapped in a cycle of fear and anger. They have twice been left in a situation where they are unable to do even basic tasks such as flush their toilets and were allegedly only provided with 6 bottles of water by Home Group.
What I’ve been told, though not yet confirmed, is that the building’s three water pumps had issues which Home Group allegedly would have, and certainly should have, known about. One pump, I have been told, has been “dead for a while”, another was “on the brink” and so the building has been relying on the one “overworked” pump which caused the issue. Residents believe Home Group will have known about this issue and were attempting to run the building “on the cheap”.
If true, this isn’t just a one-off accident; it’s a systemic breakdown in maintenance. And it mirrors another unresolved complaint from a resident in Red Barns, another small estate they oversee. At Tube Court, there are questions to be answered about other issues such as delayed repairs to the roof and who will bare the cost of the scaffolding along with subletting of flats via AirBnB. Managers deny this occurs however residents have spoken to people evacuated during the flooding who openly told them they were staying in Tube Court from New York via AirBnB.
I am deeply concerned about Home Group’s emergency response. When people’s homes are flooded, when the risk of electrocution needs to be taken seriously, they deserve more than platitudes. They need accountability. They need an apology, and frankly, they deserve compensation for the disruption.
Having gotten involved in this issue, I have been able to establish local contacts at Home Group who I have spoken with today. My impression of the Home Group staff is they are approachable and conscientious, but their emergency systems and communications with residents are not working and we need to see change. At the time of writing this I have been told that Home Group senior management have told staff that they are working hard to fix the issue, get the water back on and if this succeeds, they will be able to avoid having to move residents to temporary accommodation.
I will provide further updates on this and will certainly keep working on it.
Update
A quick update on Tube Court, I met with the Regional Director of Home Group on Tuesday (24.02.26) I raised residents concerns about the failings in the building and Home Groups slow response to the flood. He readily acknowledged that there were failures and told me that they were going to work on a new approach, they want to be more coordinated and will adopt a ‘project management approach’ to Tube Court and they have a member of staff who will be working on communications including a weekly visit. He said this means better coordination and internal collaboration to take a wider view. He told me they were refining this approach and would keep me in the loop, he also said that he would make himself available to me so that I can easily escalate concerns. I’ll keep working on this and keep sharing information about what is going on. I know that since I met him the fire brigade were called to the building again and there are some concerns about the alarm system and their response / turn around times. A 6 hour turn around seems to say the least on the long side for pressing problems. Theres obviously more to do and I’ll post updates from time to time.
I’m pleased that the Chronicle covered this story today…
https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/tube-court-flooding-newcastle-byker-33486194