A PAINTER-DECORATOR says it "rained" in his flat for five days while a horrendous leak spewed from his ceiling.
The deluge of water poured into 59-year-old Clifford Grant's home in south London, ruining his £3,000 floorboards.
And to make matters worse, it is the fourth time his flat has flooded in two years.
Council leaseholder Clifford, who has lived in the property since 1973, said: "The water started coming through at about 11pm on April 11.
"I was on my computer and I heard this dripping and thought 'not again, not again'.
"And then it started coming through heavily. There's a little gap where the concrete joins and it's found a way through there and into the kitchen as well.
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"I rang up the emergency line loads of times and said this is an emergency, my flat is getting flooded, and they didn't send anybody out who could fix it.
"I kept on ringing them the next day, loads of times, I've had about four or five plumbers round now and they still couldn't fix it.
"I was thinking, this is really bad. It didn't stop leaking until April 16, so that's five days that it's been raining virtually in my flat.
"And it was a heavy leak, a lot, a lot of water. It was awful."
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Clifford, who works as a painter and decorator but is also a part-time musician and actor, said his floor and hallway have been "ruined" by the mass of water, which has also stripped off all the paper on his walls.
"It got a lot worse pretty quickly," he said. "At its worst, it was like it was raining inside.
"Because it has happened before, the water has found its way out.
"It's like constantly, loads of dripping. It was pouring down, really bad. It was heavy."
But Clifford said the worst part is that this is the fourth time his home has flooded in the last two years.
He said: "It's happened three times before in the last couple of years to my flat, and downstairs as well.
"My neighbour's had to claim off the insurance but they just didn't do a good job.
"It's negligence on a massive scale like it.
"[The council] blamed a washer not being tightened on a washing machine or something like that previously, and a leaking tap, but if it was a leaking tap then the water wouldn't have been so heavy.
"It could be a mains thing but then it could be a boiler, and my neighbour said he thought it was coming from his bathroom."
It was like it was raining inside.
After waiting five days since first reporting the problem on April 11, the leak has finally stopped – but Clifford fears it's only temporary.
"I don't even know if they've fixed the problem," he said.
"They've turned the water off upstairs and I have to give my neighbour buckets of water. It's terrible."
He added that he only had the floorboards fitted in his "beautiful, high-spec" kitchen 12 months ago and he now faces a huge bill to replace them.
"I've only just had the floor put in about a year ago. It's going to cost a lot of money to replace, about £3,000 for the floor," he said.
"It's solid oak, 18mm solid engineered oak."
Clifford, who was the first person to move onto Central Hill Estate in Gipsy Hill, is even more furious as he pays almost £2,000 a year in service charges.
'RIP OFF BRITAIN'
He said: "It's a lot of money. It's for damage, gardening, and a bit of cleaning, but it's a very expensive service charge.
"We haven't even got a lift and it seems to go up all the time.
"It's rip off Britain, just making money out of other people's misery."
Clifford finally had a call from the council late on April 16 to say someone would be round to fix the issue – but he said it was "too late really".
"They should have got someone round on Monday, or Tuesday at least," he said.
A spokesperson for Lambeth Council said: "We were informed of a leak at this property last week and immediately sent out an engineer to fix it.
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"Unfortunately, it was a complex problem affecting a number of properties and needed extensive work over a number of days to fix it to the high standard we demand for our tenants.
"We apologise for the disruption and distress this has caused to residents in the meantime."
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