Child’s Window Fall Death Blamed On Scandalous Maintenance
The inquest into the death of a young boy who fell from a tower block window has concluded and found faults with the flat’s windows and the maintenance/repair they had received.
Aalim Ahmed, aged five, fell from the fifteenth floor flat in Plaistow in East London on 16 May 2024. A low-quality CCTV recording captured the incident. The young lad was heard counting down, 5,4,3,2,1 before plummeting, possibly hitting the side of the building and then landing on railings. He died instantly.
His mother, Sahra Osman, testified to the East London’s Coroner’s Court that Aalim had been diagnosed as being autistic; and unlikely to be able to deliberately take his own life. She said he was probably climbing on kitchen surfaces in a hunt for biscuits.
No restrictors
The window he fell from had no restrictors and badly maintained hinges.
Osman had pleaded to Newham Council for repairs or replacements to the flat’s windows but to no avail. She had also asked to be re-housed as she didn’t think the tower block flat was suitable for her family with one child out of two, having a learning impairment.
When the family fist moved in to Jacobs House, they were told that if they didn’t take the flat, they might be assessed as ‘voluntarily homeless’. The advice from Newham Council was to ‘move in and complain later’.
The council is still to comment on its obvious failures.
Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023
Read our explanatory article here - https://www.installationeye.com/article/housing-health-risks-healing-windows
The death of five-year-old Aalim Ahmed has put window restrictors, maintenance and repair standards in social housing under scrutiny after the inquest identified faults with the window from which he fell
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