Ralitsa Hiteva explians what's happend to her and her family.
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00:00 Welcome to 24 Foxcote. Since the 14th of February this year, this has been an active site of
00:10 a landslide which originated on the banks of the Old Royal Gill and crept up with cracks
00:20 that were big cracks that were showing on the pathway between our properties at the
00:26 back of Foxcote and Penhurst Close and the Gill. It's been going on since the 14th of
00:33 February and has so far consumed entirely the bank of the Gill, all the trees that were
00:39 on the bank, the entirety of the path that was between our properties and the Gill and
00:45 as you can see it's now about 25 metres into our garden. The really sad thing is that this
00:55 is only about 4 metres from our doorstep and on the basis of this, Hastings Borough Council
01:05 had issued myself and our neighbour with an emergency notice under section 43 of the Housing
01:13 Act meaning that we are not allowed to live in the properties until we carry out remedial
01:19 work to strengthen the foundations. The unfortunate thing here is that no such thing can take
01:27 place unless the banks of the Gill are strengthened and remedial work actually takes place there
01:34 first. So that means that the landslide will continue to be active and it's just going
01:40 to grow and affect a much bigger area of the Old Royal Gill neighbourhood. So the first
01:47 indication that we had was a power outage on the 14th of February in the morning for
01:54 more than 2 hours and this was because a ground electricity high voltage cable that runs where
02:03 the path used to be was basically out of place and they re-routed the supply. Later that
02:11 day in the evening I heard the crunching sound of trees crashing down and I went around to
02:18 see what was happening and noticed massive cracks in the pathway. We have photos of those
02:26 and I immediately notified East Sussex County Council because they're responsible for the
02:30 management of the path. I was really worried someone was going to end up at the bottom
02:36 of the Gill in the dark. The next morning already big parts of the fence of the Gill
02:44 were hanging in mid-air. There were chunks of ground that were missing and I alerted
02:50 Hastings Borough Council. We are not allowed to live in the property anymore because it's
02:55 not considered safe. We have no idea whether we'll be able to ever return and that's because
03:02 we're in a serious catch-22. We're looking for a place to rent. We would like to go together
03:12 as a family. We have two dogs and for the past year and a half we're hosting an Ukrainian
03:18 refugee who has lived with us since the first day they arrived in the UK. She would really
03:24 like to stay with us so we're trying to find boxes so we can pack everything and we're
03:31 trying to find a place to live. Unfortunately we're also really desperately trying to get
03:41 in touch with Hastings Borough Council and to have a conversation with them because the
03:46 evidence they have provided is really insufficient. There are a lot of questions about why they're
03:55 taking this approach and allowing the landslide to continue. Why they're not taking a response
04:01 responsibility for the fact that it started on their land? Why do they not have a plan
04:07 to do something to protect the rest of the Gill and more importantly the rest of the
04:13 families that live in the area? Hastings Borough Council have maintained for the past few days
04:19 that they're helping residents with finding alternative accommodation, emergency accommodation.
04:26 However that's not our experience. We were given an emergency number for a service that
04:32 deals with homelessness and when we made inquiries about what's available we were told that unfortunately
04:39 they don't have the properties that could accommodate us. It's not that we understand
04:47 that it's not that they don't want to help, they're just not able to. And we want to,
04:54 I mean we've been through a really bad traumatic thing. We're homeless now and we cannot imagine
05:02 having to separate from our two dogs or from the Ukrainian refugee who's been living with
05:07 us for the past year and a half. This has been her home since the first day she came
05:13 to the UK and understandably she doesn't want to live anywhere else on her own. So we're
05:20 just looking for privately rented accommodation because nothing else is provided. Our insurance
05:29 companies at this point in time are not recognising that we can make any claims towards housing.
05:37 So we're just viewing as many properties as we can in the hope that in this extremely
05:43 strapped market for properties with two dogs and an Ukrainian adult living with us we'll
05:50 be able to find somewhere and stay in the area. Apparently it's a standard clause of
05:55 insurances that landslides are covered but you can only make a claim once the main building
06:03 has been damaged. As you can see, although in the past eight days the landslip has advanced
06:10 significantly towards the house, at this point we can't see any visible damage to any of
06:16 the houses that are affected. That puts us in a terrible position. You either have to
06:22 pray that your house does get damaged or that it stops at a point where it gives you any
06:30 chance and hope in the future that you can go back to your property.
06:33 [BLANK_AUDIO]