'A catastrophic scandal': Hundreds of residents in tower blocks are facing imminent homelessness

The moment we step into Willow Rise, the smell of damp is overpowering.

There are water stains across the carpet and rotten wood on the doors. Around the corner, there's a hole in the wall, barely patched up with a piece of polystyrene sheet.

We're meeting a resident on the 13th floor of the building in Kirkby, Merseyside - but the lifts are broken and wires hang out of the service panel. Like everyone living here, we will have to walk.

The disrepair in this block is everywhere you look. It has now been deemed so unsafe by Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service that they are days away from serving a rare prohibition notice on this tower and its neighbour, Beech Rise, meaning residents will have to leave with immediate effect.

In total, 160 households here face instant homelessness. After climbing 13 flights of stairs, we meet Chris Penfold-Ivany.

'A catastrophic scandal' He has terminal cancer, and after chemotherapy and a liver transplant, that climb is now the only way he can get up to his flat. He tells us it's making him breathless.

He can no longer get his prescriptions delivered, as the drivers won't come up all the stairs. "It's a catastrophic scandal that we have been left like this," he says.

He has lived in this flat for 15 years and has watched the block slowly begin to fall apart over the last decade. He tells us that numerous complaints have achieved nothing.

"I'm going to say it," he says, "this is another Grenfell in the making". 'Nobody can live like this' A few floors down, Arunee Leerasiri opens the door to us, in floods of tears.

The stress of the last few weeks has left her anxious and overwhelmed. There are boxes everywhere, bare hooks on the walls where pictures hung.

She is packing up her life just three years after putting her life savings into buying this flat. Her elderly mother has come to visit, but her employers - wanting to help her - already organised removal men to take her mattress into storage as she couldn't manage without the lifts.

Tonight, and until they are told they must leave, they will sleep on the floor. "I can't eat, I can't sleep," she tells us, through tears.

"Sometimes, if I'm honest, I can't even think. This used to be my home, and now I look around and I don't even recognise it." "Nobody can live like this," she adds.

'Danger, 415 volts' She shows us a video she filmed just a few weeks ago, of one of the electrical risers on the ground floor. None of us can quite believe what we are seeing - water is pouring through the ceiling, directly on to fuse boxes and electrical wiring.

Arunee takes us down to show us the cupboard. The water has now stopped but there are damp stains all over the floor and around the electrical equipment.

The water pipes and electric boxes are just inches away from one another within the cupboard. One of the boxes, marked "Danger, 415 volts.