Two more tower blocks in Canning Town have been evacuated due to serious structural issues, taking the total to five blocks emptied in the space of around a week.
In a statement on Saturday, Newham Council said it had been informed that residents of Thanet Tower and Prince Court had been advised to leave their homes.
The notice came around a week after the evacuation of three other blocks: Sovereign Tower, Centurion Tower and St Vincent Court.
The council has set up a rest centre for affected residents and is working with Prime Property Management (PPM), the property management company, to provide support.
The council added: “Residents of Centurion Tower, St Vincent Court, Sovereign Tower, Thanet Tower and Prince Court buildings must not return to their properties until further notice.”
Residents were asked to leave Centurion Tower, St Vincent Court and Sovereign Tower in the early hours of the morning on 23 October, after structural engineers identified an imminent risk to life associated with a transfer slab beneath those buildings.
Following that decision, PPM said it was urgently investigating whether similar risks are present in the transfer slab beneath Prince Court and Thanet Tower.
PPM said: “We recognise the enormity of asking anyone to leave their home. These are not decisions we have made lightly, but they have been made because safety is our immediate priority. A dedicated phone line, email address and out-of-hours support remain available, and we encourage anyone affected to make use of those services.”
The company said the issue was identified during work to prepare building safety cases for the development, that structural engineers raised concerns after reviewing structural drawings, and that a site inspection on 21 October confirmed those concerns. It added that the relevant organisations and government bodies have been notified to seek urgent action, and that some have since attended the Royal Gateway development to discuss such action.
The issue of cracking in concrete transfer slabs is currently under investigation by the Building Safety Regulator and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. In February, a tribunal judge issued a remediation order for another east London block in Poplar, nearly a year after residents were evacuated due to cracks in its concrete pillars and transfer slab.
We previously reported on the overnight evacuation of the first three Canning Town towers. Other recent Newham coverage includes weekly food waste collections for 76,000 homes in the borough.
