Residents forced out of homes due to a landslip at Old Roar Gill in Hastings, East Sussex

SussexWorld

Ralitsa Hiteva explains what's happened to her and her family.

Transcript

00:00 Welcome to 24 Foxcote. Since the 14th of February this year, this has been an active site of

00:10 a landslide which originated on the banks of the Old Royal Gill and crept up with cracks

00:20 that were big cracks that were showing on the pathway between our properties at the

00:26 back of Foxcote and Penhurst Close and the Gill. It's been going on since the 14th of

00:33 February and has so far consumed entirely the bank of the Gill, all the trees that were

00:39 on the bank, the entirety of the path that was between our properties and the Gill and

00:45 as you can see it's now about 25 metres into our garden. The really sad thing is that this

00:55 is only about 4 metres from our doorstep and on the basis of this, Hastings Borough Council

01:05 had issued myself and our neighbour with an emergency notice under section 43 of the Housing

01:13 Act meaning that we are not allowed to live in the properties until we carry out remedial

01:19 work to strengthen the foundations. The unfortunate thing here is that no such thing can take

01:27 place unless the banks of the Gill are strengthened and remedial work actually takes place there

01:34 first. So that means that the landslide will continue to be active and it's just going

01:40 to grow and affect a much bigger area of the Old Royal Gill neighbourhood. So the first

01:47 indication that we had was a power outage on the 14th of February in the morning for

01:54 more than 2 hours and this was because a ground electricity high voltage cable that runs where

02:03 the path used to be was basically out of place and they re-routed the supply. Later that

02:11 day in the evening I heard the crunching sound of trees crashing down and I went around to

02:18 see what was happening and noticed massive cracks in the pathway. We have photos of those

02:26 and I immediately notified East Sussex County Council because they're responsible for the

02:30 management of the path. I was really worried someone was going to end up at the bottom

02:36 of the Gill in the dark. The next morning already big parts of the fence of the Gill

02:44 were hanging in mid-air. There were chunks of ground that were missing and I alerted

02:50 Hastings Borough Council. We are not allowed to live in the property anymore because it's

02:55 not considered safe. We have no idea whether we'll be able to ever return and that's because

03:02 we're in a serious catch-22. We're looking for a place to rent. We would like to go together

03:12 as a family. We have two dogs and for the past year and a half we're hosting an Ukrainian

03:18 refugee who has lived with us since the first day they arrived in the UK. She would really

03:24 like to stay with us so we're trying to find boxes so we can pack everything and we're

03:31 trying to find a place to live. Unfortunately we're also really desperately trying to get

03:41 in touch with Hastings Borough Council and to have a conversation with them because the

03:46 evidence they have provided is really insufficient. There are a lot of questions about why they're

03:55 taking this approach and allowing the landslide to continue. Why they're not taking a response

04:01 responsibility for the fact that it started on their land? Why do they not have a plan

04:07 to do something to protect the rest of the Gill and more importantly the rest of the

04:13 families that live in the area? Hastings Borough Council have maintained for the past few days

04:19 that they're helping residents with finding alternative accommodation, emergency accommodation.

04:26 However that's not our experience. We were given an emergency number for a service that

04:32 deals with homelessness and when we made inquiries about what's available we were told that unfortunately

04:39 they don't have the properties that could accommodate us. It's not that we understand

04:47 that it's not that they don't want to help, they're just not able to. And we want to,

04:54 I mean we've been through a really bad traumatic thing. We're homeless now and we cannot imagine

05:02 having to separate from our two dogs or from the Ukrainian refugee who's been living with

05:07 us for the past year and a half. This has been her home since the first day she came

05:13 to the UK and understandably she doesn't want to live anywhere else on her own. So we're

05:20 just looking for privately rented accommodation because nothing else is provided. Our insurance

05:29 companies at this point in time are not recognising that we can make any claims towards housing.

05:37 So we're just viewing as many properties as we can in the hope that in this extremely

05:43 strapped market for properties with two dogs and an Ukrainian adult living with us we'll

05:50 be able to find somewhere and stay in the area. Apparently it's a standard clause of

05:55 insurances that landslides are covered but you can only make a claim once the main building

06:03 has been damaged. As you can see, although in the past eight days the landslip has advanced

06:10 significantly towards the house, at this point we can't see any visible damage to any of

06:16 the houses that are affected. That puts us in a terrible position. You either have to

06:22 pray that your house does get damaged or that it stops at a point where it gives you any

06:30 chance and hope in the future that you can go back to your property.

06:33 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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