You might have seen that the first weekend of March was a very busy one for Red Kite, as we worked to respond to the terrible weather conditions that affected many parts of the country. With freezing temperatures, snow, wind and ice, the ‘Beast from the East’ and Storm Emma between them caused chaos!
Having closed our offices on Thursday 1st March through to Monday 5th March, during that time some of our staff worked all weekend to make sure that our most vulnerable tenants and those who experienced frozen and burst pipes, floods and loss of heating were taken care of.
Over that weekend alone, we saw:
- Our Relationship Advisors make more than 500 calls to our most vulnerable tenants, which were greatly appreciated and proved invaluable in maintain contact with those people
- Experience and Property colleagues hand out near to 50 food parcels of bread, milk and other items, to those who couldn’t get out for supplies
- 50 emergency jobs reported with our repairs contractor Axis and even more with K&T Heating
- 11 tenants who had to move out of their homes because of extensive water damage
It’s fair to say that this was unprecedented activity for us at Red Kite, but with our amazing technology and very committed and passionate staff, we were able to get help to those most in need and work with our brilliant contractors to arrange repairs and emergency supplies. We’d like to say a special thanks to K&T, Axis, Gilmartins, FSG, SCCI, Clive’s Drives, John O’Conner, Stuart Bright, Just Ask, Elliot and Jordan and Sandy’s for their support over that weekend.
But the activity hasn’t yet stopped! Two weeks on and we are still working with those 11 households who were most affected by the weather, which resulted in major floods and leaks that saw them need to move out of their homes. In some cases, pipes had burst so badly that the flooding caused extensive water damage that will take a number of weeks to dry out and then put right.
Our priority throughout all of this has been to make sure our tenants have a comfortable home, so we have moved some people into lovely guest rooms in our sheltered schemes or other properties that we own so that we can get on with the work quickly and move them back as soon as possible.
We are also working closely with tenants who have not got home contents insurance in place, meaning that where their belongings have been destroyed, they have support to get items that are most needed once they move back in.