What happened

Newham Council served dangerous structure notices on 29 October on the owners of Centurion Tower, Sovereign Tower and St Vincent Court in Canning Town, east London, Construction News and Building reported, after concluding the three blocks were in a dangerous state. The notices require immediate temporary works and risk mitigation, ongoing structural monitoring, and a full structural safety report, to be followed by permanent remedial works. Around 211 households across the three blocks had already been evacuated overnight after a London Fire Brigade warning, with correspondence to residents citing an imminent risk to life linked to a concrete transfer slab that could, in the worst case, lead to collapse.

The crisis widened the following day when two neighbouring blocks on the same scheme, Thanet Tower and Prince Court, were also evacuated after a further engineering assessment of the same transfer slab. The development, known as Caxton Works or Royal Gateway, was completed in 2017/18 by a joint venture between Galliard Homes and Cathedral Group. Galliard is understood to be working with independent structural engineers on the investigation. The managing agent, Prime Property Management, has told residents they are responsible for their own interim accommodation costs and should not expect to return in the near term.

Why it matters

Five tower blocks evacuated at short notice, with hundreds of households displaced and no return date, is a serious story in its own right. It also lands in a market already primed to expect structural defects to surface years after practical completion, where buildings signed off a decade or so ago are being re-examined under scrutiny that did not exist when they were built. For developers and contractors sitting on older residential stock, this is another reminder that the liability tail on tower construction runs a long way past handover.

What it means for your career

Cases like this generate real, fast-moving demand for a specific set of skills: structural engineers with high-rise concrete experience, building safety specialists who can assess transfer structures and facade risk, and project managers who can run enabling and temporary works contracts under pressure and public scrutiny. If that is your background, this is the kind of instruction that pays well and builds a CV quickly, because clients need people who can start immediately and work calmly through a crisis.

More broadly, remediation and building safety work is one of the few corners of UK construction still growing steadily while new-build housing output falls, and it increasingly needs commercial and QS input too, not just engineers, to manage cost and risk on contracts agreed under time pressure. If you're weighing up a move in a slow housing market, a structural remediation specialist, whether a contractor, consultant or client-side team, is worth a serious look.