A MOTHER and her one-year-old daughter were forced to abandon their home for five days despite more than 30 calls to Roddons Housing Association to fix their broken heating.

Jenny Morgan’s boiler went bust on the coldest day of winter, when the temperatures in parts of Fenland dropped to -16C.

Ms Morgan says she repeatedly phoned the Roddons customer care team but says it was 24 hours before she could get through to their out-of-hours service.

She says that when she did get through, she was told it would be another day before the heating could be repaired.

It was not fixed until 10am on Wednesday (February 15) - nearly four days after the original call.

However Ms Morgan had to wait another day before she could move back in so the heating had time to warm the house in West Parade, Wisbech for her and her baby.

In the meantime they had no choice but to sleep on a camp bed at their mother’s home in Walsoken.

“It is a shame that the local newspaper has had to get involved to get this fixed,” she said.

“I told them my daughter was in the cold and had really bad asthma, so I can’t leave her.”

Debby Bunn, Roddons managing director, said: “Due to the extremely cold weather we experienced an unusually high number of emergency calls that weekend, so we could not respond to calls within the usual call handling time.

“Last weekend’s extreme temperatures caused heating systems to break down and lead to a huge rise of emergency calls.

“Our teams and additional staff worked tirelessly throughout the weekend to deal with all enquiries as quickly as possible to support residents.”

Ms Bunn said Roddons repairs team visited Ms Morgan on Saturday afternoon but she was not at home. She said a card was left through the door by the team, who also said they offered her temporary heating and tried calling her mobile.

Ms Morgan emphatically denies getting the card and said she only received it on Tuesday when she was at her mother’s.