Around 211 households have been evacuated from three tower blocks in Canning Town after serious structural concerns were raised about the buildings, Newham Council has said.
The council said residents were asked to leave Centurion Tower, Sovereign Tower and St Vincent Court in the early hours of Friday morning. Council officers, the London Fire Brigade and the buildings’ property management company were all involved in the evacuation.
Deputy mayor Cllr John Gray, the council’s cabinet member for housing, said the council was told last night that the three blocks were “facing serious structural problems in the buildings, reported directly from the property management company”.
“Around 211 private households were requested to be evacuated by the property management company alongside the LFB and Council officers in the early hours of the morning,” he said.
The exact nature of the structural problems has not yet been made public. The council has not said how long residents are likely to be away from their homes.
Rest centre set up for displaced residents
Cllr Gray said the council “immediately set up a rest centre and provided emergency accommodation and support for residents without alternative accommodation for the night”.
“We encourage affected residents to make contact with the property management company for additional support especially in relation to alternative accommodation measures,” he added, giving the management company’s contact as royalgateway@primepm.co.uk.
“We are here for residents if they need assistance while this issue is resolved and will support and are working with the property management company to achieve the best solutions for our people.”
The council stressed that it is working with the management company and emergency services “to minimise risk to members of the public”. Cllr Gray said he was on site with Newham officers overnight and would continue to support residents.
The full statement is available on Newham Council’s website.
What happens next
For now, the residents’ return home depends on whatever the structural engineers assessing the buildings conclude. Evacuations of this scale are typically precautionary: once assessments are complete, residents are either allowed back with conditions or rehoused while remedial work is carried out.
Residents who have not already done so should contact the property management company directly about alternative accommodation. Those in immediate difficulty can also turn to the council’s rest centre, which the authority said is there for anyone without somewhere else to go.
Anyone with concerns about the safety of their own building can contact their landlord or managing agent first; the council can also advise on the options available.
High-rise safety in east London
The incident is a stark reminder of how seriously structural concerns in tall buildings are taken in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire. Canning Town itself has a long association with tower-block safety: the partial collapse of Ronan Point in 1968, after a gas explosion, killed four people and remains one of the defining moments in British high-rise history.
Councils across London routinely carry out fire and structural risk assessments on tall buildings, and the London Fire Brigade is involved in enforcement. When a managing agent or the fire brigade flags a serious concern, the response — as here — is to evacuate first and investigate afterwards.
The evacuation also underlines the pressure on housing in the borough. Newham, like every London borough, is working to bring homes back into use and manage temporary accommodation demand — a theme neighbouring Tower Hamlets also confronted this week with its plan to turn four Canary Wharf office blocks into 180 temporary homes.
London Streets will update this story as the council releases more information about the buildings’ condition and when residents can return.
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