A SOLIHULL woman says she has been left housebound due to delays getting a ramp fitted to take her wheelchair.
Dawn Steele of Harwood Grove, Shirley, has had mobility problems for a number of years and despite a whole knee replacement operation eight years ago is now confined to a wheelchair.
However efforts to get a permanent ramp fitted to her ground floor flat have been hit by series of delays dating back to well before lockdown last year.
“I simply don’t have a life, I’m broken and I’m lost stuck here in my own home,” said Dawn, who is also recovering from bladder cancer.
“This has just gone on and on and I don’t see why anyone should have to live like this.”
Dawn is the leaseholder of her flat and up to two years ago had been using a temporary ramp to get in and out of her home.
However, she says following complaints from other residents, Birmingham-based property consultants Pennycuick Collins, who manage the property for the landowner, asked her to remove the ramp.
This rang alarm bells with Dawn’s occupational therapist in Solihull who in November 2019 managed to secure funding to provide a permanent ramp for her.
“Pennycuick Collins and my local Councillor Max Mcloughlin came out to discuss it and do the plan and Pennycuick Collins said it had to go through the freeholder, who agreed to it, but it needed a solicitor to draw up a licence,” said the 57-year-old mum of two who now has to rely on friends and family taking her out to get through her front door.
Since then, she says, nothing has happened, beyond Pennycuick Collins claiming it had sent through the documents for Dawn to countersign months ago, documents which Dawn says she never received and which this week the property agent admitted had not been sent at all.
“This has gone beyond heel dragging,” said Coun Mcloughlin.
“The funding has been in place since November 2019, the plans have been drawn up and they’re ready to go – what is the problem?”
Laura Locke of Pennycuick Collins said Dawn’s case had been elevated to their company directors, and blamed the pandemic for some of the delays.
She said: “We thought the solicitor’s letter had been sent to her but it hadn’t. However, it’s all going ahead it’s all being sorted.”
