The mouldy, damp walls in Ms Mulholland’s home

POLICE were called after an artist staged a housing repairs protest outside a polling station.

Patricia Mulholland took a sign with a poem to Islip Street, Kentish Town, on election day last Thursday.

Protesting outside poll­ing stations is against the law but the 82 year old said she had suffered enough after a decade-long leaking roof dispute with the council.

Officers moved her on, but not before she got to air her complaint directly with Camden Council’s chief executive Jenny Rowlands, who had been touring polling stations across the borough.

Patricia Mulholland with her poem

Ms Mulholland, who has lived for 45 years in Gaisford Street, said: “The rain wakes me up in the night. Cold air comes through the brickwork – there are several holes. “I have bowls on the floor, they’re dripping away. The electrics are getting wet from it. I have scaffolding up simply to keep the plastic covering over my roof in place.

“I was thinking this is making me despair. I thought ‘tomorrow is polling day, so many people will be going in and out of there’. So I wrote a poem and went and stood outside. The polling station got the police out but the officers were very nice, sympathetic even.

“Then out comes this Jenny Rowlands. She said she would see that something was done. The next day I had a call from someone who said they were on it. They were saying ‘don’t worry this has come from the top’, but I’ve heard all this before.”

Ms Mulholland said she was moved into temporary accommodation, in the Britannia Hotel in Belsize Park, for five months – with her three cats having to stay in a cattery – because of the problem. But the works never got completed and she was moved back in.

Ten years later she said her roof is still leaking water and her windows are rotted shut.

The message outside

Last year, she said the council – which is the freeholder – requested she signed a “gagging order” in exchange for them completing the repairs. “It seemed ridiculous so I refused,” she said. “The council wanted me to sign this thing saying we will never speak of it again.”

Ms Mulholland says she has been told the works are too expensive and that is why they have not been done for so long. Instead, scaffolding has been put up with plastic sheeting wrapped over to stop water getting in.

Ms Mulholland moved into the flat having been homeless and bought it after she got some compensation.

She said she wanted to leave something for her seven children but would now struggle to sell her home due to the dispute.

Council surveyors have said the house needs a new roof and “underpinning” work.

Camden’s housing chief Councillor Meric Apak said: “We would like to apologise to Ms Mulholland for the issues she’s experiencing in her home and to reassure her that we are doing everything we can to resolve these problems as quickly as possible.

“Our repairs team met with Ms Mulholland this week to discuss the planned repair works and we will be providing a full breakdown of these and regular updates to ensure she is aware of how the works are progressing