In the year after Sheila Seleoane died in south London, no-one visited to check up on her.
Audrey says the neighbours did all they could to raise the alarm that something had happened to SheilaResidents in a south London block are considering legal action against the housing association Peabody after their neighbour lay dead for two and a half years before her body was found - despite their efforts to raise the alarm. How could someone remain undiscovered for so long?
Inside the fridge, a trifle dessert gave an indication of how long her body had lain there. It had gone out of date two-and-a-half years earlier.Weeks after Sheila is thought to have died in August 2019, Chantel, who lived in the flat directly below, changed her light bulbs. As she removed the old bulb, a pile of maggots fell from the ceiling. In the weeks that followed, the problem only got worse.
Other neighbours on the same floor say they tried putting towels and sheets under the door to try to keep the smell out. Iyesha, another neighbour from the same floor, also contacted Peabody multiple times. "I kept calling saying there's a smell of death," she says. "Nobody came." Instead, without having spoken to Sheila, Peabody applied for universal credit to be paid directly to it on her behalf. It did this via a government scheme called Alternative Payment Arrangements, which is intended for tenants struggling to pay their bills.
Until this moment, at no point during the year after Sheila died did her rent arrears, her missed gas check or her failure to respond to letters and emails raise a concern to prompt anyone from Peabody to physically visit the flat and find out what had happened to her.The trauma of what happened is still with the neighbours of Lord's Court
Housing charity Shelter says there is a trend for housing associations to merge and become large corporations. Its head of policy, Charlie Trew, says the risk is they lose their original mission "to put the tenant first and profit second". This could partly be due to the large "patch sizes" Peabody had at the time. Housing associations generally divide their social housing into "patches," usually based on a geographic area. Each "patch" has a neighbourhood manager or housing officer whose job it is to know residents' issues and concerns, resolve problems and to provide support.
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