‘Trapped’ East London residents in iconic tower demand compensation

Some residents who were trapped in their flats for nearly a week in an iconic high-rise tower block in East London after the lifts failed are demanding compensation.

MyLondon quotes the residents as saying that 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.

A 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, the online publication reports.

“We created a group chat with all the residents that we’ve now met with, and everyone wants to go for compensation,” Gupte is quoted.

It says 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, told the publication that he had a spinal cord injury, making it impossible for him to climb the 15 storeys.