Appeal for restoration of Housing Executive services after hijacking – Campbell

Councillor Campbell said: “This must have been a very frightening experience for the driver of this van and I offer my full support to him and also to the Royal Mail, Asda and Translink workers who were victims to similar incidents the past 24 hours.

“Following the incident in Creggan the Housing Executive has now withdrawn all their repair services to a wide area of the Moor ward. This means that many households are now without essential maintenance and the repairs scheduled will be pushed back.

“I will be in direct contact with the H.E today to try and get these services restored as soon as possible.”

Housing Executive maintenance services have been withdrawn from a large part of Derry after a contractor’s van was hijacked in the city on Monday.

In a statement the Housing Executive confirmed which local estates will be affected, following the incident at Circular Road in the Creggan area.

Police have said an object was thrown into the back of the van, which is used to carry out repairs and refurbishments to the homes of Housing Executive tenants.

A controlled explosion was later carried out on the vehicle in the built up area yesterday.

A spokesperson for the Housing Executive said on Monday night: “We can confirm that a van belonging to one of our contractors working with the Housing Executive was hijacked earlier today.

“We utterly condemn this incident.

The Housing Executive takes these matters very seriously, and the safety of people who work for us is paramount.

“To ensure that those who work for us are not placed at unnecessary risk, our contractor has withdrawn services in the Bishop Street, Brandywell, Creggan, Rosemount and Rossville areas of the City until further notice, and all tenants who were due to have repairs carried out today have already be notified.” The spokesperson added: “We will be regularly assessing the needs of our tenants going forward, and will advise you in due course.

“If you are a tenant and your local Housing Executive office is Waterloo Place, we will try to contact you if there are further disruptions to our maintenance service.”