Everybody out!: residents in The Fold, the tallest building in Queen’s Quarter, next to Croydon Town Hall, have been told they have six months to leave their homes
EXCLUSIVE: Croydon faces another housing crisis as poor build quality on four blocks built alongside the Town Hall is forcing the owners to carry out extensive works. By STEVEN DOWNES
Residents living in Croydon’s fourth-tallest building, 35-storey The Fold, on Queen’s Gardens, have been told that they have six months to get out of their homes because of “additional issues” that have been discovered relating to fire safety in the block.
And similar concerns are being looked into at the three other residential blocks on the site – all of which are owned by Croydon Council.
The decision on The Fold was reached after consultants conducted “extensive investigations” into continuing problems with mould, damp and leaks in the new-build.
The building was only completed in 2022.
Residents living in The Fold have told Inside Croydon that among these “additional issues” discovered are fire shutters that do not work and fire doors which have notable gaps underneath them, completely compromising their intended purpose.
L&G, the insurance company which owns The Fold, admitted last October that significant remedial works needed to be undertaken to resolve the mould and damp issues. In a letter to residents sent yesterday, seen by Inside Croydon, the managers have now decided that the works necessary can only be done with the building fully vacated.
Some tenants pay rents of up to £3,000 per month, yet many have been plagued with mould on their walls, damp and leaks. According to one tenant today, what was intended to be a rooftop garden is now “nothing better than an open-air pond”, and is blamed for many of the issues with damp.
In the letter from Fold’s management company, residents are offered effectively five months’ rent (including the full deposit refund) as compensation.
The Fold, together with three other blocks on the site of the former Croydon Council office building Taberner House, provide around 500 homes in total.
Ceiling crisis: Tweneboa’s video showed two flats where ceilings have collapsed because of leaks
Today, L&Q, the housing association which manages two other council-owned blocks in the “Queens Quarter” development, have written to their residents to advise that their homes, too, are to be subject of special checks.
The fourth block on the site, Malcolm Wicks House, provides 90 council flats. While this building is understood to suffer from similar issues with build quality as The Fold and L&Q’s Bloom House and Chorus Apartments, Croydon Council has so far failed to make any public statement regarding its tenants.
After several years’ delay following the demolition of Taberner House, building work on the site between the Town Hall and the Croydon Flyover began in 2018. The whole development received public subsidies from the Mayor of London worth £100million.
Neither the developers who managed the scheme, Hub, nor their building contractors, Henry Construction, are still in business.
Inside Croydon reported in 2024 how housing campaigner, Kwajo Tweneboa, exposed the horrendous conditions in two apartments in The Fold, posting a shocking video on his social media feed.
L&G bought the 251-unit The Fold for £100million in 2018. Last year the company said it was “deeply concerned” by reports of mould, damp and leaks in their flats.
Expensive accommodation: L&G’s managers continue to market flats in The Fold – though there’s no mention of the leaks, mould and damp, or the dodgy fire shutters
Many residents, dissatisfied with the living conditions, have already moved out of the block, which is estimated to be half empty.
L&G’s managing agents sent a letter to all residents yesterday under the heading “IMPORTANT”.
It said: “We would like to sincerely thank you for your continued patience and cooperation over the past 12 months while we’ve worked to understand and resolve the issue of water ingress affecting the building.
“Following extensive investigations, our specialist consultants have now provided final conclusions and recommendations for remedial works.
“The investigations identified defects in the roof and internal pipework as being the primary sources of water ingress. Repairs have already been carried out wherever possible and affected apartments have been professionally stripped out to remove damp and mould. We continue to monitor and investigate any remaining water damage.”
It was then that the housing managers addressed the issue of fire safety in a building that is 374 feet tall.
“During the course of our investigations, we identified additional issues unrelated to the original water ingress, including defects in internal compartmentation and thermal bridging from windowsills. These findings are being addressed as part of the wider remediation programme.
“We want to reassure you that the building remains safe for occupation. This has been independently validated by external fire safety assessors, who continue to monitor the building regularly. Their assessments confirm that the current safety measures in place, including a full sprinkler system, an automatic opening ventilation (AOV) system, 24-hour on-site staffing, and safety walks every three hours, ensure robust protection for residents.”
Soaring problems: Croydon Council owns three of the four blocks on the Queens Quarter site
Residents are unconvinced, however, and have requested their own, independent fire safety inspection from the London Fire Brigade.
In the managers’ letter, they refer to “extensive and disruptive works across all apartments” that they need to conduct. They say: “Unfortunately, this work cannot be completed whilst the building is occupied and we will therefore require residents to vacate the building by 1 March 2026 to allow the remediation programme to proceed.
“We understand this is difficult news, and want to assure you that this decision was not taken lightly. We take our obligation to provide quality housing to you very seriously and fully appreciate the disruption this will cause.”
The landlords are offering residents compensation equivalent to four months’ rent, plus the return of their full deposit, and waiving the lease’s requirement for two months’ notice.
Plus they will hand out a list of alternative accommodation in the area. Which is nice of them.
Better check: the building safety letter sent to the 172 flats across Bloom House and Chorus Apartments today
There’s to be a meeting for residents at The Fold on Tuesday evening.
Today, residents in the neighbouring Chorus Apartments and Bloom House – 172 homes managed by housing association L&Q – received letters of their own about what they described as “precautionary safety checks”.
“We’re doing this,” the letter stated, adopting a particularly patronising tone, some might think, “because L&G, the organisation that owns The Fold, a neighbouring building to yours, has recently identified some building issues while they were investigating a leak. These issues include a problem with the internal compartmentation within that building (‘internal compartmentation’ means how the different parts of the inside of the building are separated, which is sometimes part of a building’s safety system)…
“We’re not aware of similar issues in the building you live in, but your safety is our top priority so we will be carrying out checks to understand whether similar work is needed at Chorus Apartments/Bloom House.”
L&Q’s checks will begin by the end of this month “but it may take a number of weeks for our contractors to complete the work and let us know the results of their survey”.
And they added: “We’d like to reassure you that your building is safe. We carry out annual Fire Risk Assessments which have rated the building as safe, and we have a rigorous programme of testing and servicing to ensure safety systems such as alarms, sprinklers, ventilation systems and fire doors in the building are well-maintained, supported by a dedicated Building Safety Manager for these blocks.”
Residents in these blocks are to have a meeting on Thursday, September 18.
Read more: L&G ‘deeply concerned’ by state of high-rise flats at The Fold
Read more: Croydon shamed over ‘dangerous squalor’ in council flats
Read more: Ombudsman demands culture change after council flats ‘shock’
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L&G buying The Fold for £100m is probably the best bit of business Croydon Council will ever do.
Except L&G bought The Fold from the developers, not the council
This Council can’t do anything right! The only winners are the developers.
What a damning indictment of the British Building Industry. You would have thought buildings would progress with time, but since Business has been allowed to virtually self regulate building regulations and methods you are taking a leap in the dark with anything built in the twenty first century. So much more of this rubbish to come and inflicted with the developers and builders not to bear any responsibilities for the costs to be borne by the public.
It’s also a damning indictment of Croydon council, whose inspectors watched the place go up from their office across the road in Fisher’s Folly and did nothing to make sure it was built properly. Were they taking backhanders to look the other way, bone idle or just blithering idiots?
or badly managed? Cheeseburger was the top of that unholy mess
This whole project was a joint endeavour instigated by Negrini and Butler.
Why should anyone be surprised?
All 3?
Allegations of taking backhanders, as well as being bone idle and blithering idiots? Yes to all of those. LBC is a shambles
As an ex occupant of Tabener House it feels very sad to know my 10th floor office made way for a fairly sick building
What a surprise:
“Neither the developers who managed the scheme, Hub, nor their building contractors, Henry Construction, are still in business.”
How many times do we read this?
Building Inspectors used to visit sites at various stages to ensure that Building Regs had been followed and that work had been completed to an acceptable standard. Did they only supervise small developments and trust major site managers to follow all the rules? Or do Building Inspectors no longer exist? If they do, what have they been doing during the last decade?
I think you are recalling the days before the Minister for Housing and Planning Gavin “Sorry, I’ve lost your letters about cladding, Mr Ames” Barwell and the Prime Minister David Cameron with his “Bonfire of Regulations” which sadly did not just lead to a bonfire of paperwork but to the real bonfire of homes and people that was the Grenfell Tower disaster.
One could also perhaps give an honourable mention to Mike Fisher who told us Taberner House needed to be completely demolished because it was too old whilst other concrete high rise office buildings of a similar vintage seem to have suffered little to no noticeable deterioration and in many cases have been successfully and cheaply converted to housing without a complete rebuild.
I wonder if “Fisher’s Folly” suffers from a leaky roof? No, thought not. Still at least someone has noticed the mould this time and is trying to do something about it unlike with, for example, the Council owned Regina Road block which was allowed to spawn so much damp, rot and fungus that it had to be demolished because it had been needlessly and deliberately neglected into becoming structurally unsound.
No doubt another private development of similar quality to the Folds will take its place.
A brief search on HenryConstruction yields some disturbing results. Shocking!
And are you going to share what aspects you found to be so shocking?
“Chaotic accounting”, so many unpaid suppliers., and articles such as these …. Millions paid to Henry family before collapse, administrators claim | Construction News
Henry family and directors face claims topping £31m | Construction Enquirer News
I’ve spoken with some of the residents of The Fold and their experiences are horrific. It appears that the owners of the building have known about problems for some time. The eviction order seems to have coincidentally arrived after the residents started working together to raise their complaints.
We need to support the residents of The Fold to make sure they receive proper compensation and suitable re-homing, and we need a full public investigation into how this whole situation was allowed to happen. This investigation needs to include inspections of the other blocks on this site which may be suffering similar faults.
Why were they told to leave? Surely L&G should FIND them homes to go into, pay their rents until remedial action has been taken for them to return?
Because that’s how capitalism works. The buildings exist for the benefit of L&G’s shareholders, nobody else. Once the works are complete, L&G will want theor money back, which will pe provided by a new set of tenants at even more confiscatory rents.
Maybe they should all get together and chip in each to hire a solicitor to sue L&G.
I would imagine the tenancies are assured shortholds which provide the landlord with the right to evict tenants with one month notices after six months of a tenancy. L&G are a ruthless housing association with little interest in the tenants other than as an income stream. No doubt they will be directing Tenants to their other developments in Croydon which require occupants. They are putting up a lot of shared ownership highrise currently in Croydon.
However, as a landlord, it has a legal responsibility and duty to make sure its property is suitable for human habitation.
For example, when a fire occurs in a rented home and makes it inhabitable, and it is the fault of the landlord, then the landlord would have to put the person(s) in suitable accommodation including in a hotel, and pay for that. That is what the affected persons should do, at the least to make enquiries with a solicitor, and some offer free initial consultation.
An inevitable consequence of planning at whatever cost as long as developers got what they wanted. Negrini, Butler, Cheesbrough, Ross “Dodgy” Gentry and the rest. Remember the Councillor who got shouted down for daring to suggest development slowed down until Enforcement could catch up?
The parasitic community of Croydon Council and its cohort is an insult to humanity. I’d liken them to tapeworms, just about allowing their hosts to stay alive whilst greedily consuming endlessly from them.
I know there are some decent folk who try their hardest but the people I’m talking about are not them.
I feel so sorry for the residents who are being forced to find somewhere else to live, through no fault of their own! This is a scandal and heads should roll but of course nobody will take any responsibility or admit to any wrongdoing, there should be a public enquiry or something!