Hundreds evacuated from two more east London tower blocks
Engineers find undersized transfer slabs significantly overstressed in Newham buildings completed 2018, residents told to fund their own hotels first
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Centurion Tower has been evacuated
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<p>Labour’s candidate for West Ham and Beckton James Edward Asser</p>
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Hundreds were evacuated in the early hours of Friday morning
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Hundreds more residents have been ordered out of their homes in Canning Town in east London, after structural engineers warned of an imminent risk to life in two further tower blocks. The evacuations come just a week after some 210 households were cleared from neighbouring buildings in the same development at 3am, with firefighters attending.
The five blocks — Centurion Tower, St Vincent Court, Sovereign Tower, Thanet Tower and Prince Court — form part of the Royal Gateway/Caxton Works scheme in Newham, completed in 2018 and built by Galliard Construction. The danger lies in the transfer slabs beneath the buildings: engineers who inspected the site on October 21 found the slabs undersized and significantly overstressed, well beyond the safety margins normally built into such a design. The problem surfaced only during work to prepare building safety cases for the development — paperwork that followed, rather than preceded, the faults it revealed.
The management company, Prime Property Management, has told residents that given the immediate need to vacate, they must pay for their own alternative accommodation in the first instance, recovering the costs from third parties later. Its advice: stay with family or friends free of charge if possible, and if not, keep hotel costs close to the daily rate of the rent they are no longer receiving anything for.
James Asser, Labour MP for West Ham and Beckton, said there were serious questions about how long the problem had existed and where the fault lies. Newham's deputy mayor John Gray said the council had set up a rest centre and provided emergency accommodation — while encouraging residents to contact Prime, the private management company, for further support.
A week after the first evacuation, residents still have not been told when they can return. The buildings are nine years old.