Insurer declines to cover temporary housing after five London towers are evacuated over overstressed transfer slabs

Prime Property Management, the managing agent, wrote that residents must cover alternative accommodation "in the first instance" while the right-to-manage (RTM) companies try to recover the money from "appropriate third parties", which it warned would take time. It asked people to stay with family or friends if they can and to keep hotel bills close to their daily rent. The insurer's refusal was set out in correspondence seen by The Standard.

About 210 households left Centurion Tower, St Vincent Court and Sovereign Tower at 3 a.m. on Oct. 23. On Oct. 30, Thanet Tower and Prince Court were told to go too, after a structural engineers' report found the transfer slabs under the blocks undersized and significantly overstressed, far past normal design margins. The problem came up during work on building safety cases and was confirmed at an Oct. 21 site inspection.

The towers were completed in 2018 and built by Galliard Construction, part of the Galliard group. Residents told The Standard that families are paying for hotels and Airbnbs they cannot afford, that a placement agency hired by Prime has not found housing, and that some people have stayed in the buildings. Rise Climbing, a gym in Caxton Works whose ceiling is the underside of Centurion Tower, has closed.

James Asser, who represents West Ham and Beckton in Parliament for Labour, said there are questions about how long the problem has existed and where the fault lies. Residents still have no date to return.