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Sheila Salione lay dead for two and a half years before her body was found, despite repeated

efforts to raise the alarm, despite tenants who reported on maggots coming through their ceiling

of a terrible smell. The question we've been asking all this week in a series of reports is,

how could someone remain undiscovered for so long?

Sheila was a 58-year-old medical secretary who died in her South London flat in August 2019.

The chief executive of Peabody, Sheila's landlord, will be joining

us at half-past eight. We're going to be hearing from the housing minister Michael Gove tomorrow.

But now Harry Farley joins us in the studio with his latest report, Harry.

Thanks, Nick. Yes, as we've explored this story this week, we've looked at the different aspects of it.

And so far, we've looked at the mistakes made by individual organisations, like you mentioned,

the Metropolitan Police, Sheila's landlord, Peabody. And yesterday we explored how isolated Sheila was.

But there are broader systemic aspects to this story as well, issues around how

removed organisations are from the people they serve, issues also around our housing system,

particularly our social housing system in this country and how that's working. And all of these

factors combined in Sheila's story.

I had to put towels and stuff at the front door so the smell wouldn't come in, but that

wasn't helping. That's Aisha, who lived on the same landing as Sheila. Earlier in this series,

we heard how the smell spread throughout their block in late

2019. And every single time we report to Peabody, Peabody would just tell us that it's the

drains and they're looking to get fixed. I kept calling saying, well, there's a smell of death.

I haven't seen number 16. Oh yeah, we'll send out welfare check. Nobody came.

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