A HOUSEHOLDER has told of his disgust at a housing association as he had to cope with the stink coming from his blocked drain for over a week.

A 65-year-old Chippenham man who lives at Allington, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was told he would have to wait up to two weeks for someone from GreenSquare to come and unblock his drain, which has caused his back garden to flood and smell unpleasant.

The man, who suffers from PTSD and severe arthritis, noticed that his drain was blocked last Monday when he spotted soap suds and remnants from his washing up in his garden.

“It was making too much mess”, he explained. “It floods out into the back garden and was stinking out the back door and in these weather conditions it is 10 times worse.

“It got to the point where I couldn’t go out my back door because the water was all over the path.

“If I walked in that and back into the house I would have stinking carpets.

“I don’t use my garden a great deal but the fact is there are times you need to go into the garden. I need to put my washing out, I have a large sun house and a shed in the back garden.

“I feel my quality of life has been taken away.”

Blocked drains have been a problem for the past 12 years, but the man said that in the past Greensquare would normally come and fix it within a day.

He said: “It has been like it now for 12 years. It is a constant problem, it keeps coming back.

“They used to get back to me instantly, but it was a week ago on Monday I rang them.

“I can’t get the services I need to live my life in a sensible way.”

Ken Neale, GreenSquare’s group responsive operations manager, said: “We can only apologise that this has taken so long to sort out and that we didn’t arrange a repairs appointment for this customer sooner.

“We have recently moved to a new system for scheduling repairs and unfortunately the incorrect priority was set on the system for a gully drain blockage.

“This has now been rectified and we spoke to the customer and arranged for Drain Wizard to visit his property yesterday.”