A WIDOWED pensioner has been forced out of his living room after a building firm left him without a ceiling and lighting for weeks.

Albert Axcell, 73, from Southend, paid £100 excess up front to Alpine Construction to replace his living room ceiling after an upstairs leak caused damage.

But when contractors came out to take the old ceiling down, they removed vital wooden noggins which hold up plaster board by mistake.

The distressed pensioner has been left with no living area due to having no ceiling or lighting, and all of his furniture and TV are crammed into a small spare room.

Contractors failed to turn up, and when a plasterer came out the following day, he explained he could not complete the job due to wooden noggins having been disposed of.

Alpine, based in Southend, have since said it has been experiencing difficulties with staff shortages due to the pandemic.

After Albert had heard nothing from the company, his son, Alistair, intervened.

Alistair said: “It beggars belief how they can leave the poor guy. He’s got no space at all downstairs and nowhere to sit.

“It’s not a nice situation for him at all.

“We just lost mum quite recently and only just got her ashes back. He’s finding it all too stressful as mum used to do everything for him, he’s just not used to dealing with it all.”

Albert, luckily, was able to get out of the house on most days to visit his sons, as staying at home with the state it had been left in was causing him stress.

He added: “Understandably, he was now becoming upset at the way he was being treated and how he was having to live.

“As with many people from his generation my father tends to be very accommodating and probably too kind for his own good.”

Alistair says he was told by the manager at Alpine that the best he could do was “possibly” get a carpenter round on October 13 to replace the missing noggins and then arrange for the ceiling to be fitted at a later date.

Alpine failed to complete the works.

A spokesman for Alpine, said: “We have given our very first dates available to carry out the remainder of this unforeseen work and are within our insurance guidelines.

“We apologise for any inconvenience this has caused, the team at Alpine Construction are working as hard as we can in these very difficult times.”