‘Forcing me to leave London’: Disabled South Londoner trapped in flat for 5 weeks due to broken lift

Pete Donnelly, 40, said the prolonged outage in the Peabody-run block felt like ‘house arrest’

06:00, 12 Nov 2026Updated 11:13, 12 Nov 2026

A South London wheelchair user says being trapped in his flat for five weeks after the building’s only lift broke down felt like “house arrest.” Pete Donnelly, 40, was left stranded as Peabody, which runs Elmwood Court, in Battersea, took more than five weeks to repair the lift after it broke down on September 29.

Pete told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) that Peabody’s failure to prioritise an issue so pressing it meant he could not leave his home, which is on the second floor of the block, up four flights of stairs, had been “incredibly difficult”. He said the lift had broken down multiple times over the years he had lived in the building and, rather than Peabody improving its response, this was the longest it had been out of service.

The leaseholder said he had received poor communication from the housing association about the prolonged outage and when it would be fixed, and it had not provided him with an update he had requested on his personal emergency evacuation plan.

Pete said: “I’ve been stuck in my flat. I’ve been in constant contact with Peabody, who manage the property, since then trying to get updates, trying to understand what’s going on, and it’s just been really, really poor communication, inaccurate communication and such slow progress.”

He added: “It’s essentially a house arrest… being stuck at home for essentially no reason, for nothing that you’ve done.”

Peabody, which has offered Pete £200 in compensation, told the LDRS it was sorry he and his neighbours had been left without a working lift for so long.

Broken Homes: What MyLondon is calling for

Through our Broken Homes campaign, MyLondon is calling for:

1. Specifically with temporary accommodation placements, a universal distance cap across councils in England to end the postcode lottery. Sending people to the other side of the country on a temporary basis is unfair, when at any moment the phone can ring to tell them to come back. Some councils have a cap, for instance 90 minutes’ travel time. Most don’t have that, so we say: level the playing field.

2. Linked to point 1, we want a ban on councils being allowed to discharge their statutory duty to someone who refuses an offer of housing, whether temporary or permanent, that is an unreasonable distance away. If offering someone a home a long way away speeds up the process of them being housed, it needs to be the resident’s choice.

Using the threat of being on the street to get people to agree to moving over 200 miles away, having to quit their job and detach themselves from their support network, is a national scandal in itself.

3. Specific legislation that requires landlords to repair broken lifts within 24 or 48 hours. It’s a significant public health and safety issue that people with limited mobility are either being trapped inside their homes for weeks at a time, or they are walking up more than 20 flights of stairs when it’s not safe for them to do so.

If sourcing parts is a common issue, develop a national strategy for ensuring the UK has those parts available.

4. A better system of cooperation between councils in England for sourcing and managing temporary housing. Councils are taking part in a real life game of Monopoly, competing on the open market against each other to buy up cheap homes, often in each other’s back yards. This only moves the problem around and disadvantages councils in a worse financial situation, and sparks bidding wars that push up property prices, fuelling the crisis.

Pete described how being suddenly trapped in his flat, not knowing when the lift would be back in service, had completely disrupted his life, taking a toll on his physical and mental health.

He said: “I’m missing out on everything. It’s incredibly demoralising. I’m not able to get out to exercise or socialise, so it’s having an impact on physical and mental health… I’m missing medical appointments because I can’t get out.”

He added: “It’s just been incredibly difficult. It’s just such a surreal situation. This is definitely a flashback to Covid times of not being able to go outside. There’s no way it would be taking this long if there were more priority on their part to get it fixed or it affected more people.”

Pete is now looking into moving out of London, as he said living with the anxiety of not knowing whether the lift would break down for weeks again was too damaging to his quality of life.

He said landlords needed to treat lift failure as a serious, urgent issue, recognising the severe impact on disabled people’s lives, and ensure timely repair of any breakdowns.

Pete told the LDRS: “I realised I can’t risk this happening again – service is going downhill, the length of time it’s taking to repair is beyond ridiculous. I need to find somewhere else to live, and realistically that’s going to be moving out of London.

“I can’t risk being trapped in my own home. The lift has been out of order for five weeks – that’s something you just can’t risk – so their inability to fix this is forcing me to move out of London.”

A Peabody spokesperson said: “We’re very sorry that Mr Donnelly and his neighbours were without a working lift for so long. We know how difficult and frustrating this has been.

“The lift is now working again. Engineers attended when it first broke down, but we needed to bring in specialists and wait for parts which are not readily available. Sadly, this took a lot longer than we would have liked.

“Our local team has been in regular contact with Mr Donnelly and other residents to support them while the lift was out of service, and we offered temporary accommodation so that he could attend his appointments. We recognise how much this has affected Mr Donnelly, and we’re sorry.”

Are you experiencing housing issues in London? Email [email protected].

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