An Eltham woman has hit out at her housing association for not resolving an ongoing water issue which she claims is having a “huge impact” on her life.

Mariella Elliott has been a resident at Leybridge Court, Eltham Road, since the birth of her 15-year-old son Liam.

But for the past year the 33-year-old has had to sleep on her mum’s sofa due to an unresolved intermittent water supply that she claims affects residents from the whole block.

She said: “You can’t do anything – you can’t use the toilet, brush your teeth or even have a bath.

“It’s so upsetting and has been going on for such a long time now. You can go weeks with water and then all of a sudden you have none for days and when they do finally put the water back on the pressure is so low it takes half an hour to run a bath in the morning.”

Ms Elliott works for a fostering and adoption charity and said the issues she has had with the water supply have affected her career.

She said: “It’s had a huge impact on my life – I’ve been crying at work and the amount of emails and calls I have had to make are ridiculous. I just don’t know who else to talk to or who can help me.

“There have been times when I have just wanted to call work and say ‘I’m not coming in today’ when the water hasn’t come on and instead just knock on all my neighbours’ doors and just go down to the Affinity offices. The problem is always on my mind.”

Despite the water problems at the property Ms Elliott claims the housing association has raised her rent several times.

She said: “It’s disgusting and I’m fuming. Since they took over the flats they put the rent up year after year and the first year they put our rent up by 12 per cent.

“Affinity Sutton just doesn’t understand.”

The housing association is blaming Thames Water for the ongoing problems.

An Affinity Sutton spokeswoman said: “We absolutely sympathise with the issues our residents at Leybridge Court have been experiencing with their water supply and appreciate the inconvenience this has caused.

“We can confirm that we have logged complaints with Thames Water and due to their failure to resolve this matter we have logged further complaints with Ofwat and the Consumer Council for Water relating to the failure of Thames Water in resolving the issue.

“As Thames Water have failed to investigate this matter to our satisfaction, we have instructed our own specialist contractors to investigate the fault, which has been diagnosed as low water pressure on the incoming main Thames Water supply pipes for the building.

“Affinity Sutton has recently replaced a Thames Water stop valve in order to restore water pressure and improve water supply at Leybridge Court.

A Thames Water spokeswoman said: “We’re sorry to hear there are ongoing issues at Leybridge Court. Our investigations in August showed there was an issue with the internal building pump, which is maintained by Affinity Sutton, however we’re more than happy to have another look at what’s going on and we’ll make contact with the housing association to see what we can do to help.”