Pregnant woman 'terrified' after bath filled with urine and faeces in former Kingston Prison housing site

Emily Drum, 37, and her young family moved into a flat in the Kingston Prison housing development on December 4, 2023 in a bid to get ready for the arrival of their baby girl who is due this week. Within a month of moving in to their shared ownership property, the couple were horrified to witness their bath tub filling with urine and human faeces.

They immediately filed an emergency complaint with Vivid about the situation. They also received £200 compensation after a 'service failure' when their plight was was not logged correctly as an out of hours emergency call which went towards paying for new towels which were ruined in the clean-up process. Vivid's contractor Vistry also failed to contact the couple after being alerted.

Emily told The News her frustration came from the fact that there was little done to find out the cause of the problem and she continued to contact Vivid in order to try and get some answers. Fear continued to grow within the family who anticipated that the lack of resolution would result in the incident recurring - and they were not wrong. She said: "It is one of the new build flats in the old prison so we moved in there on December 4 and we obviously didn't think there would be any issues but January 14 was when we first had urine and faeces come up into our bath. Our guess was that it is coming from the flat next to us but we don't know - it has happened to another flat which is on the ground floor and they have been told that the reason is because they are the first in the system but we are on the first floor so we don't know why it's happening to us."

On March 17, the bath began filling up with urine and faeces once again and Emily called through to Vivid to put an out of hours emergency call in but she cancelled it in order to avoid disrupting her youngest child as it was getting late. The couple cleared up the mess and she logged another call in the morning in a bid to get some answers as to why this was happening. Despite putting in complaints and trying to get in touch with the housing company, she had not heard anything back.

Emily added: "I'm most terrified for it not to be sorted before bringing the new baby home. What if I'm bathing her and it starts coming up again?

"It has been nothing but stress for the past two month and the frustrating thing is now every time we hear a noise in the bathroom, we run in there hoping it hasn't happened again."

The News contacted Vivid regarding the situation and they responded saying that they would be visiting the property.

Mark Churcher, head of repairs and compliance, VIVID, said: "We’re working very closely with the customer to ensure her home does not experience the issue it has been. Our specialist contractor for drains and sewers visited the home today (March 22) to investigate the problem and seek to identify the root cause. They discovered a partial block in the pipe work and were able to remove it. Our main priority is making sure that our customers home is fit for purpose and safe for her and her family."

For more information about Vivid, click here.