Residents are demanding compensation for being trapped in their flats for nearly a week in an iconic high-rise tower block in East London after the lifts failed. The lifts in the Balfron Tower in Poplar have been plagued with breakdowns for months, but this is the first time both have broken down simultaneously, they said.
Student, Vasundhara Gupte, 22, has lived on the 15th floor of the tower with her boyfriend Agyush Rangras, 21, for eight months and reported that for around a third of that time, at least one of the lifts has been out of service. Now, she has decided to take matters into her own hands, she said: “We created a group chat with all the residents that we’ve now met with, and everyone wants to go for compensation.”
The group have been voicing their troubles with the building’s management company, Way of Life. Some of the Tower Hamlets residents have disabilities, meaning they were trapped in their flats for nearly a week.
Vasundhara has a hamstring injury herself from a gym accident, which made it “very difficult” to leave the home she pays £2,450 a month for and had to postpone recovery appointments because climbing the 15 storeys would just undo any healing. She contacted the management company saying, “I need urgent assistance bringing up my groceries, I don’t have food”, and said that every one of her emails was ignored.
One of the lifts has now been ‘temporarily fixed with old parts’, Vasundhara said, while the other is still out of service. Both were out of order for six days from Tuesday, May 13, until Monday, May 19. Vasundhara said she received an email around 5pm on the Monday that one lift had been temporarily fixed. She went out for just over an hour for her recovery session and said when she got back it was out of order yet again.
The lift came back into service later that night, but Vasundhara and other residents had had enough and decided to take to social media to publicise their problem. A neighbour, who did not want to be named, reported that he has a spinal cord injury, making it impossible for him to climb the 15 storeys.
He told MyLondon: “It’s very difficult for me to walk down, so my time outside my apartment in the last week or so has been very limited.”
Following this post, Vasundhara claims a member of the management team knocked on the man’s door and demanded to know if it was he who had put up the post and that it be taken down. “He basically just said if the post is not taken down, our good will is gone”, Vasundhara explained. She said she was not sure whether this meant her security deposit was under threat or even questioned if it was “a threat to our safety.”
Vasundhara said when she finally had managed to speak to management, they had been “very rude” and “condescending” and could not assure her that the lift was not going to break down again. Meanwhile, she and her boyfriend saw residents climbing the stairs with “two babies and then groceries all together”, which she said was “one misstep from a really bad accident happening.”
A 59-year-old woman, who wanted to be anonymous, has lived in the tower since January last year and said she could not leave her flat for an entire week because she has disability problems with her pelvis following giving birth. She said: “It took me nearly an hour to get up the stairs, and there was no help. Someone helped me take my bags up ahead of me, but by the time I got to the top, all the ice cream and frozen things I had bought had melted.”
When asked how she managed without being able to go to the shops, she said: “I survived with whatever I had.”
The woman actually lived in the Balfron Tower in 1995 and reported there were no such issues with the lifts at that time. She owns her flat outright and is in the process of getting a stair lift inside, but said, “If this is going to keep breaking like this, what are the options for me?” adding that part of her is thinking of moving out and selling her flat which is not what she had wanted to do.
Emma Motoike lives with her husband and her dog Roy on the 24th floor, the very top residential floor and has been for around a year. Emma has to carry Roy all the way down 24 storeys of stairs to take him for a walk every day. “He’s 12kg, so quite heavy but luckily I’m dieting now! He doesn’t like stairs so I have to hold him the whole way.”
She said it takes her around 10 minutes of solid stair climbing to get up and down from her flat which she said was “frustrating”. She said the lifts breaking is very common, but this is the first time she has seen them both broken.
Several tennats told MyLondon that the lifts can only be permanently fixed once special parts are sent from Germany but until then a temporary solution with older parts has been implemented.
Management company Way of Life has been contacted for a comment.
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