A housing association has apologised to residents of an assisted living complex who were without hot water over the weekend.

Nearly 100 elderly residents have been without hot water since the weekend at Millbrook House, Soham.

Residents among the 87 assisted living flats say the situation “is getting a bit of a joke” and that it’s not the first time this has happened. Sanctuary were however quick to act, dealing with the situation.

Doreen Strike, a spokesman for the residents, said: “For the last three weekends we’ve had no hot water. We’re all sick of it.

“Last year we had it go off for 16 days over the Christmas period as well. Now it’s started again. It always seems to be when we get bad weather.

“Sanctuary Housing is just telling us to boil kettles, but some people in here can’t do that because they will scold themselves.

“We’re not able to have hot showers or wash up because of it,” she added.

“Sanctuary need to sit up and do something about it.”

Tracey Spencer, national service manager for Sanctuary Extra Care said: “There are three boilers serving the scheme and unfortunately over the weekend one of the pumps stopped working and needed to be reset which left some residents without hot water.

“We are very sorry and want to reassure residents that even though the system has been up and running since Monday morning we have arranged for the pump to be completely replaced this week to prevent the same from happening again.

“We would never want any of our residents to be inconvenienced, and want to reassure them that staff are available to help.

“Residents can contact us to report any issues, either face to face or via our 24/7 repairs hotline.

“All of the rooms are equipped with a pull cord alarm system which can be used to contact the on-site care team if residents ever need any urgent additional support.”