Families with young children and others who are disabled or critically ill, were forced to cook, bathe, and flush toilets with bottled water after repeated water stoppages at Stadium Place in Chingford this month, reports Marco Marcelline

More than 200 households at the former greyhound racing track in South Chingford have repeatedly been without water and heating since the start of the year.

Last month, residents, including families with young children and others who are disabled or critically ill, were forced to cook, bathe themselves, and flush toilets with bottled water.

The iconic racing track Walthamstow Stadium was redeveloped into a 294-home site called Stadium Place by London & Quadrant (L&Q) in 2017. 

However, faults in its construction has meant residents have had to be temporarily relocated for five to six months at a time while remediation works take place in their flats. 

This multi-million pound remediation project, which is due for completion next year, has included replacing all windows, retrofitting sprinklers, and improving firestopping between flats. 

But residents returning to remediated flats have complained that the site’s communal hot water and heating system repeatedly cuts off.

In July, tenants were left without any water on three separate occasions, twice during the evening and overnight. 

Meanwhile, in December 2024 and January 2025, the first residents who returned to their remediated homes suffered recurrent losses of heating and hot water.

In all of those outages, residents say that L&Q had failed to inform them it was going to happen, and then did not update on when their water would be turned back on.

Sebastian, who preferred not to share his surname, told the Echo he had encountered numerous issues since he and his young family moved into their Stadium Place flat in 2017.

Accusing L&Q of presiding over a “culture of negligence”, he said: “It’s terrible how they treat us. Whatever L&Q touches, they leave it in a much worse position afterwards. Contacting them is like having a full-time job; whenever there is an outage, we have to wait in a queue and re-explain what the issue is.

“Their staff don’t even know that Stadium Place has communal boilers, so they think it’s just individual flats that are experiencing problems rather than many of us at the same time.”

An L&Q spokesperson said the housing association supported residents in July by “delivering bottled water and checking on households with additional needs”. 

L&Q’s support is however challenged by Stadium Place Tenants and Residents Association (TRA) chair Sarah Chaney, who said “multiple complaints” remain outstanding despite the TRA’s repeated efforts in raising them. 

She said: “The TRA has done our best to work with L&Q, raising issues with hot and cold water immediately and in detail, as well as notifying them of problems with the provision of other services and supporting resident feedback on the works programme. However, multiple complaints remain outstanding, with issues lingering for many months. It is not clear that L&Q is taking their responsibilities as a landlord seriously.”

The Echo understands that L&Q delivered bottled water to residents on the 12th of July, having failed to do so on previous water outages on the 2nd and 5th of July.

Furious tenants have also pointed to their rents having gone up by as much as 30% despite the ongoing issues. 

Vicky Savage, executive group director for development and sales at L&Q, said the water outages were caused by a switch problem in the water system, which prioritises supply for sprinklers during periods of low water pressure.

A pipework leak and an error by contractors when testing a dry riser were also identified as issues, she said. 

In a statement to the Echo, she continued: “We’re deeply sorry for the repeated water outages at Walthamstow Stadium. We recognise how difficult this has been and have worked to support residents. We identified and fixed the cause of the problems in July and have carried out a review to ensure this doesn’t happen again.

“In December and early January, an issue within the building’s heating system stopped some boilers from starting. We reached out to residents at the time and resolved the issue. We also installed a new monitoring system to help detect future faults more quickly and are planning further upgrades to improve resilience.”

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