Labour council was warned about unsafe balconies a year before collapse

Residents living in a new-build apartment complex in London say they raised their concerns about faulty balconies two years before one collapsed on Saturday – but were repeatedly ignored.

Homeowners at Weavers Quarter in Barking and Dagenham, east London, claimed that the local authority failed to respond to their pleas for help even though five balconies had previously fallen down.

Another collapsed last weekend, this time a first-floor balcony on to the street below, triggering safety inspections into dozens more.

Dame Margaret Hodge, the local Labour MP, said she wrote to the council in 2021 with concerns that the balconies were dangerous.

Last month, she sent a letter to the council’s housing company, B&D Reside, urging them to refund a “significant” proportion of residents’ service charges because of its “unacceptable” performance.

Resident Matt Lismore believes the balconies on the estate of 414 mixed-tenure homes, which was built for the council by Paris-based developer Bouygues, had been constructed with “cheap and ineffective” materials.

Mr Lismore posted a photo on X of a “smaller, partial collapse” in summer 2021.

He said his repeated complaints to the council and its companies were ignored and he was told the balconies were safe.

In May 2022 he raised the problem with Darren Rodwell, the leader of Barking and Dagenham Council who is expected to succeed Dame Margaret as the Labour candidate for the area.

In an email to Mr Rodwell at the time, Mr Lismore expressed “serious concerns” specifically about how “several balconies have fallen off onto the property below”. 

Mr Rodwell said he raised the issue in a letter to the managing director of Bouygues.

He said: “In September, L&Q, the original development agent for the scheme, served a defect notice on Bouygues about the soundness of the balcony facades. I understand that Bouygues have accepted this notice, but not yet liability for the work.”

Matthias Beirens, a 35-year-old flat owner on the estate, said: “I saw a neighbour’s just coming off – not the entire balcony but the bit below it. A kid always plays on the balcony, if [they] had been outside [they] would have pretty much been dead.”

Dan Hill, another flat owner, said that despite residents raising the issue, “it was completely ignored”.

He said the balcony that collapsed on 11 November “could have killed someone” and it was clear that there were defects in the way the structures were built.

Pieces of metal up to 10 metres have previously come off the roof and blown onto the street. Mr Lismore also claimed some of the fire doors have failed fire safety tests. The council declined to comment on these specific issues.

A £210,000 bill for the council’s vehicle fleet

In a letter to B&D Reside last month, seen by The Telegraph, Dame Margaret raised concerns about the management of the building.

She said the council-owned companies did not answer calls for transparency of costs and improvement of the quality of services and accused them of “failing to deliver value for money to leaseholders and renters in the Weavers Quarter estate”.

Speaking to The Telegraph, Dame Margaret said the collapsing balconies were the most serious problem, but said residents also had to deal with “a lack of security, a lack of ground maintenance and increasing service charges with a lousy service and a demand for more money”.

She added: “The leaseholders are totally powerless in this. They’re expected to foot the bills with very limited powers to question them.”

Dame Margaret told B&D Reside the performance of the local authority and its management company “in relation to gardening, repairs, cleaning and property management has been and continues to be unacceptable”.

Her letter added: “Residents should be refunded a significant portion of the costs they incurred for these services since they moved into their homes.”

Mr Lismore, who works in financial services and chairs the residents’ association, pays £3,400 a year in service charges for his two-bedroom flat, which have risen from £1,700 when he first bought the new build flat four years ago. The fees are expected to reach at least £3,900 next year.

He said: “I’ve had people call me crying in tears saying they can either pay the service charge or feed their kids.”

Documents seen by The Telegraph show flat owners are paying £45,000 a year for a graffiti team, £107,100 for “extra lifts” and £210,000 for the council’s vehicle fleet. 

Mr Lismore, 29, claims there are no extra lifts and said there have been no graffiti incidents affecting their estate.

His insurance costs have risen fivefold in the past four years, from £141 to £706 a year. 

The council bundles the costs of their insurance with its higher risk homes elsewhere in the borough, so residents are effectively paying more to subsidise the costs of insuring other flats.

Mr Hill, who bought a 30pc stake in a two-bedroom shared ownership flat, said his service charges have risen from around £2,200 to £3,300 over the last four years, which he claims has become “completely unsustainable for most people living here”.

He said “over the last few years the council has been inflating that service charge quite significantly, charging more and more”, and that in his view, the properties are no longer “affordable homes”.

Mr Hill said the council had initially advertised new builds with lower service charges, although the documents did state that the charges were “estimates”.

Addressing the maintenance charges, a spokesman for Barking and Dagenham Council said: “The services provided to leaseholders in 2019 were substantially underestimated by the previous managing agents and this was corrected when the council took over the management of the development in 2020 but these updated costs were not passed on to leaseholders until 2021.

“At the same time, the level of services provided increased from fortnightly mobile cleaning/caretaking to three full time caretaker/cleaners operating daily across the development.”

The spokesman added: “Service charges will differ depending on types/levels of services provided, usage and are apportioned by square meterage of individual properties, therefore not a direct comparison.”

The council did not comment on the specific charges for extra lifts, graffiti costs and the vehicle fleet.

The local authority said the council’s housing company, B&D Reside, “is arranging works to reduce the risk until we have clear assurance that all balconies on the estate are safe”.

It said: “We are currently in discussions with Bouygues to impress on them the need to take urgent action on the concerns raised. We will continue to work with Bouygues, L&Q and Reside to address any ongoing resident concerns.”

In response to residents paying higher insurance costs to offset high risk homes, the council said insuring all of its properties together reduces insurers’ costs of having to respond to multiple tenders and leaseholders benefit from economies of scale.

A spokesman for Bouygues UK said: “Following the incident at Weavers Quarter Estate, where some soffit boards detached and fell from a balcony, our main priority has been ensuring residents’ safety. 

“We are working hard with Reside to take immediate action, put the necessary safety measures in place and undertake appropriate remediation works.”