Man's body left in flat for up to two months

11:10pm Thursday 10th January 2008

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A man's body was left in a flat for more than a week despite neighbours raising the alarm.

Peter Frank Kiff's corpse may have been in the flat for up to two months before it was found.

Residents living in housing association flats in 23 to 25 Gloucester Place, Brighton, said they complained to Sanctuary Hereward Housing several times over the Christmas period after the building became infested with flies and an awful smell started coming from flat 7 on the second floor.

But the residents claim that each time they phoned the housing association they were told it was not Sanctuary's problem.

The police broke into the flat on January 3 after being called by a concerned resident and found the man's badly decomposed body.

A Sussex police spokeswoman said: "We were called and came within an hour of the phone call. Residents were concerned because the man had not been seen for some time. His death is not being treated as suspicious."

Mr Kiff, 63, known as Frank, lived at the flat for more than six years.

Neighbour Charles Mitchell, 81, said: "I had talked to him and been in his flat a couple of times.

"He had a black cat and I don't know if he has died too.

"The building was getting filled up with blue bottles, you can still see there are some on the lights now. With all the flies being around and him being dead for so long it is fortunate that it did not create some sort of disease in here.

"People had knocked on the door and not got an answer so they rang Sanctuary who said it was not their problem. In the end the police came and broke the door down and found him in there."

Neighbours said they had not seen Mr Kiff alive since some time in October.

Another resident, who did not wish to be named, said: "We told the housing association there was something wrong but they did not doing anything about it.

"I have only lived here for three months but I don't want to live here much longer. The whole reason I came here is because I thought people were going to keep an eye on me. We are not very happy about it."

A spokesman for Sanctuary Hereward said: "Sanctuary is saddened to hear of Mr Kiff's death and would like to offer his family our condolences at this time.

"23 to 25 Gloucester Place is a rented housing scheme where residents live independently. Our on-site presence is limited to a weekly mobile caretaking service.

"We received a complaint over the Christmas period about a problem with flies at the property. Sanctuary followed internal procedures for this type of issue and this included advising the resident who made the complaint to contact Environmental Health.

"At that time the source of the problem hadn't been identified. We weren't alerted to any concerns about Mr Kiff until January 2 and we tried to make contact with him the same day.

"The following morning, on receiving no response, Sanctuary tried to contact his next of kin. As we were unsuccessful in getting hold of anyone, we requested the police to attend (as we have no legal right to break into the property) and the body of Mr Kiff was discovered in his flat.

"Sanctuary does not have any further details surrounding the resident's death and no doubt the police will be making their own investigations if appropriate."