Addenbrooke’s staff left without water or heat over Christmas

Addenbrooke’s doctors, nurses and researchers at an accommodation block beside the hospital have spoken about the lack of any running water or heating over the entire festive period, saying the conditions experienced were unheard of.

The mains supply was cut off to Linton House and Kingston House on Christmas Eve as a result of flooding on December 23. Residents were forced to go to a nearby tap at a car park to get fresh water. They were advised to shower in the hospital, which potentially put them at higher risk of infection – and potentially also put the students in the new accommodation at risk of infection.

One of the residents, Dr Zuzana Kadlecova, initially sounded the alarm during the crisis.

Writing to the Cambridge Independent, she said: “We are left with no running water and heating supply for a sixth consecutive day.

“This is a major risk to health as it is a key obstacle for frequent handwashing and affects personal hygiene and protection measures in a shared accommodation. This may result in a spread of any infectious disease, not only Covid.

“Overall, the management of this crisis by the Sanctuary company leadership was incredibly poor, and we are worried that not enough is being done to arrange the repairs as soon as possible.

“Only on Monday [December 28], which was day five of the crisis, were we offered decent replacement accommodation on the other side of the town.”

Sanctuary Addenbrooke’s is part of the Sanctuary Group, which owns and runs 10,000 homes across the UK, including accommodation for NHS staff and key workers at the Addenbrooke’s site, and for research staff on the surrounding Cambridge Biomedical Campus.

It is a registered, exempt charity – meaning it is not monitored by the Charity Commission – which delivers its services to staff at Cambridge University Hospitals (CUH).

About 100 flats were affected, though not all were occupied. To date, 33 of the residents have taken up the alternative accommodation­­ offer.

On December 30, Dr Kadlecova reported progress.

“The reason we contacted you and the politicians is because we were left without information or communication for several days, so the overwhelming feeling among the 25 people who communicate with each other here was that they [Sanctuary] didn’t want to pay for the problem to be fixed during the holiday.

“They did offer temporary accommodation in student houses. I’m a researcher on the biomedical campus but for a nurse to take a shower in a student block, with students, housing maybe ten people, it’s maybe acceptable for one or two days but not four or five. The students might infect them, or vice-versa – there’s all these super-strict measures to try and prevent the spread of disease so the Sanctuary measures would have made them all useless.”

Though the water and heating are back on, it’s apparently only a temporary solution.

“The flooding on the wiring of the pumps failed,” explains Dr Kadlecova. Everything is working temporarily but the water could go off at any point.

“Even so we were super-upset – these grievances are the ones we shared collectively – because it took two or three hours for the contractors to put in place a temporary solution, which is a relatively short amount of time, it could have been done on the Friday or the Saturday so it’s not the super-efficient response to the technical problem they tried to present it as. It was not technically demanding.”

A CUH spokesperson said: “As a result of issues caused by flash flooding in two of our accommodation blocks, the water supply has had to be turned off.

“Our accommodation provider is working to resolve the problem as quickly as possible.

“Temporary measures are in place for heating, showering and the supply of fresh drinking water, and we have sourced emergency accommodation for those affected.

“We are very sorry for the impact this has had on those living in these blocks over the festive period.”