Forced to fight Residents take class action after developer goes into administration
Arc Tower, Ealing
Gurpreet Sanghera, a lawyer at Simkins, owns a flat in the Arc Tower where her firm are preparing class action for a number of the tower’s 93 leaseholders.
The building, where a threebedroom flat used to fetch £1 million, was completed two and a half years ago, and developers would normally be liable for the defective works.
The contract that the owners entered into was with a Jersey company called Frep (Ealing) Ltd, which has since gone into administration.
Galliard, the main contractor, refused to accept responsibility, stating: “Galliard was not the developer or designer … Galliard was the building contractor that constructed the building, which was signed off as compliant with building regulations at the time of completion.”
As the legal wrangling over who is responsible continues, the residents have now spent more than a year living in fear for their safety, with a fire earlier this month bringing home to them the dangers that they face.
“The fire was incredibly scary,” Ms Sanghera said. “It doesn’t feel safe to me at all. I am on the eighth floor and the waking watch doesn’t give me much comfort. I won’t feel safe until the cladding is replaced.
“If we have to pay ourselves we are potentially looking at hundreds of thousands of pounds per flat.
“From a safety point of view there are huge concerns, and from a financial point of view it is devastating. I am trapped.”
A Galliard spokesman added that in similar newbuilds insurance companies had paid out and that the works involved should not cost
£20 million.