Customers living in the Kendal and Chirton areas – update

Update at Wednesday 22 December @ 5.30pm

The Council have provided an update to confirm that engineers have been working on site all day at Kendal and Chirton and will continue to do so until late this evening and into tomorrow to reconnect the supply of heating and hot water to your home. The Council will provide us with another update tomorrow morning and we’ll update you as soon as we can. We apologise for the inconvenience this has caused.

Update at Tuesday 21 December @ 5:30pm

Newcastle City Council has confirmed that emergency repairs to the substations providing heating and hot water to homes in the Grace Lee and Shipley areas have been successfully completed.

The heating and hot water to 482 homes has been reconnected and you should start to feel heat within the next 2-3 hours.

It may take time for the hot water to filter through to everybody’s home and back up to normal operating temperatures depending on where you are on the system so please bear with us.

The Council’s engineers will continue to work throughout the night and tomorrow to install temporary boilers to the substations at Kendal and Chirton areas which will restore heating and hot water to the remaining 406 homes.

We’ll provide further updates on this as we receive them from Newcastle City Council. Once again, we sincerely apologise for the inconvenience.

As always, if you need to contact us, please call our freephone number on 0800 533 5442 and, if you are a private tenant living on the estate and purchase your heating and hot water from YHN/Newcastle City Council, please contact them directly on 0191 278 7878.

Update at Tuesday 21 December @ 2.15pm

Council engineers are continuing to carry out emergency repairs to the district heating system which supplies heating and hot water to homes in the Byker Wall, Brinkburn, Kendal, Spires and Chirton areas.

Newcastle City Council has assured us that their teams will try to complete the emergency repairs and get the system reconnected and back up and running as soon as possible.

Our colleagues are making welfare calls to all customers affected by the current disruption to the supply of heating and hot water to your home.

Staff are delivering portable electric heaters to all affected homes on the estate this afternoon.

We’re awaiting an update from the Council and we’ll communicate this to you via SMS text messages and our website, as soon as possible.

We advise customers to wait until you have been contacted by a member of staff and to bear with us while we contact all customers affected.

If you miss our call or need to speak to us urgently, please call our 24-hour freephone number on 0800 533 5442, however, our lines are extremely busy at the moment.

Alternatively, please send us a direct message in messenger and we’ll respond to your enquiry as soon as we can.

If you are a private tenant living on the estate and purchase your heating and hot water from YHN/Newcastle City Council, please contact them directly on 0191 278 7878.

Update at Monday 20 December @ 8pm

Newcastle City Council has today informed us that it needs to carry out emergency repairs to the district heating system which supplies heating and hot water to 888 homes in the Byker Wall and surrounding areas of the estate.

The system will be shut down at 2am tomorrow morning (Tuesday, 21 Dec) to carry out the necessary works.

Each household in this area should have a full tank of hot water. We therefore advise that you try and preserve this for as long as possible and use hot water for essential purposes only.

This also means there will be no heating to your home and we sincerely apologise for the inconvenience this will cause. Portable electric heaters will be delivered to all affected households tomorrow (Tuesday, 21 December) by a member of staff. If you are unavailable, or miss our call, the neighbourhood housing office will be open until 5pm tomorrow evening for you to collect one.

Newcastle City Council has assured us that their teams will try to complete the emergency repairs and get the system reconnected and back up and running as soon as possible. We will continue to keep you updated.

A council spokesperson said: “On Saturday the last of those affected by the heating failure at Byker Wall had their heating restored, however further issues have since arisen which has left the supply intermittent.

“As a result, we have decided to install emergency boilers, but this will require heating being down for over 880 properties for one to two days depending on the property.

“We will provide heaters to all those affected and carry out welfare checks door-to-door until heating is fully restored to all homes.

“We are working closely with Byker Community Trust, part of Karbon Homes, who manage the estate, to ensure that their customers are kept fully informed of the situation.

“We would like to apologise for the inconvenience this is causing and reassure all those affected we are doing everything we can to restore heating as quickly as possible.”

If you need to contact us, please call our 24-hour freephone number on 0800 533 5442.

If you are a private tenant living on the estate and purchase your heating and hot water from YHN/Newcastle City Council, please contact them directly on 0191 278 7878.