EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
Soaring problems: Croydon Council owns three of the four blocks on the Queens Quarter site
Fire safety inspectors from the London Fire Brigade were on site this morning at The Fold, the 35-storey tower block close to Croydon Town Hall, where residents fear for their well-being because of poor-quality finishes to the building’s fire doors and other safety equipment.
A residents’ meeting scheduled for 6pm this evening has had its venue switched, from within the building itself to the nearby London South Bank University building on the other side of Queen’s Gardens.
Sources’ accounts vary on the reason for the venue change: some suggest it is to accommodate the large number of residents who wish to attend. Others say that the meeting has been moved to LSBU because of worries about the safety of The Fold which the meeting is to discuss.
Inside Croydon reported on Friday that residents in the Fold, which has 251 “executive apartments”, had been given effective notice to quit by March 1 2026, as the owners, insurance giants Legal and General, seek to vacate the building in order to conduct extensive refurbishment work. The building was only completed in 2022.
Only half of the flats in The Fold are thought to be occupied at present, with some three-bedroom apartments costing up to £3,000 per month in rent. The company managing the properties was still marketing vacant flats last week, at the same time it was encouraging existing tenants to leave in the next six months.
The Fold is one of four residential blocks in the so-called Queen’s Quarter, built on the site of the former Croydon Council office block, Taberner House. The 500-home scheme, which built over a large section of Croydon town centre’s only public park, was approved by the council’s then chief executive, Jo Negrini, and backed by the then cabinet member for housing, Alison Butler.
The scheme received £100million in housing grants from the Greater London Authority.
The Fold is now owned by insurance giants L&G. The three other blocks – the council flats in Malcolm Wicks House, and Bloom House and Chorus Apartments, both managed by housing association L&Q – are known to suffer from similar chronic problems such as mould, damp and leaks.
All four blocks were built on the council-owned site from March 2018 – so after the Grenfell Tower disaster in Kensington in June 2017, when 72 people died in Britain’s worst residential fire since World War II.
The significant issues over poor build quality – contractors Henry Construction have since gone out of business – have also raised important questions over the role of Croydon Council in enforcing – or failing to enforce – building regulations.
In the letter from The Fold’s management company to tenants last week, they admitted that their consultants surveying the building had identified additional problems with the fire safety features.
Residents have told Inside Croydon that the fire doors do not fit properly, and that fire shutters do not work.
Toxic legacy: Queen’s Quarter was another project under council ex-CEO Jo Negrini
In the letter to tenants, The Fold’s management said: “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.”
And the managers issued an assurance that “the building remains safe for occupation”, after being independently validated by external fire safety assessors.
“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,” the management said.
L&Q announced last week that it has also decided to commission specialist checks on the buildings that they manage, Bloom House and Chorus Apartments.
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.
The Fold’s landlords are now 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.
The public relations company hired by L&G have refused to answer Inside Croydon’s questions regarding the surveying checks that they may have carried out seven years ago before forking out £100million on a badly-built building.
We also asked why, given L&G’s public statements in October 2024 that they intended to take immediate remediation work on the property, that they won’t actually begin such works across the whole building until March 2026, at the earliest. Again, they have declined to provide any answer.
Residents in L&Q’s managed blocks are to have their own meeting on Thursday, September 18.
Read more: The Fold folds: Hundreds of tenants given six months to leave
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
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If only half of the flats in The Fold are thought to be occupied at present, it seems odd that Legal and General are not proposing to deal with any issues in the building floor by floor with residents being offered re-housing elsewhere in the block as the necessary works are being carried out. Hopefully that will be an option put forward at this evening’s meeting to the existing residents. If scaffolding is required, tenants could be offered suitable discounts for the loss of amenity whilst the works are being carried out. If there were genuine concerns about fire safety, then I would hope that residents would be encouraged to leave sooner than next March.
That’s what they’ve tried to do over the past year. And failed.
But it’s not like all the flats are empty from floor 17 upwards, or that they are all on the Flyover side of the building.
And now the failings with the fire safety situation appears to be worse than they first thought.
Just who did they get to conduct a survey of the building before paying £100million, though?
” ….contractors Henry Construction have since gone out of business. ”
There seems to be a very convenient and coincidental pattern here….
I always thought this high rise building wasn’t safe , you only have to look at the sky line to see this building is leaning to the right as you come into Croydon town centre From Peterborough Road, when you go past this building there is a huge gap at the bottom at the base of the building that isn’t flush with the ground, to me it’s just a major disaster waiting to happen
“Bloom House… [is] known to suffer from similar chronic problems such as mould, damp and leaks.” What’s your source for this? I live in Bloom House and have never had any problems, and have never heard anything about any of the other residents having any either. There was a leak due to a burst sprinkler pipe, but that only affected the ground floor where there are no flats. It was fixed and the damage made good reasonably quickly.
Profoundly disappointed that you should ask seasoned journalists to identify their sources for something like this. It’s a thing we would not normally do. Of course, it will be your neighbours who have suffered from the consequences of poor building practices and negligent building standards checks by the council.
But on this occasion, we’ll make an exception: it was L&Q. That’s why they are sending in surveyors.