Stratford's towers and the management they demand

Few parts of London changed as fast as Stratford. In little more than a decade it went from rail sidings and industrial land to one of the city's densest new residential quarters, with clusters of tall towers around the park, the station and the shopping centre. From above, the pattern is unmistakable: a regular grid of recent high-rise, mostly residential, built close together and built tall. That newness is part of the management story, because these are buildings designed and occupied largely inside the modern safety regime, and they carry its obligations in full.

A quarter of new high-rise residential

Stratford's towers are predominantly residential, which puts most of them squarely inside the duties that apply to homes in tall buildings. A higher-risk building in England, according to gov.uk under the Building Safety Act 2022, is at least 18 metres tall or at least seven storeys, whichever comes first, with at least two residential units. Much of Stratford's new stock clears that line comfortably. For those buildings, the duties are not optional housekeeping. They are a defined regime with a named dutyholder.

That dutyholder is the Accountable Person, and where there are several, a Principal Accountable Person, who according to RICS must register the building, hold a safety case and produce a safety case report for the Building Safety Regulator. For a quarter built this recently, the question is rarely whether the regime applies. It is whether each building's record is in the state the regulator expects, and whether the people running them know which duties sit with whom.

What the density demands day to day

A cluster of tall residential blocks built close together concentrates a particular set of recurring obligations. The taller and more occupied a residential building, the more its safety rests on routines that have to be done and recorded rather than assumed.

• Monthly checks of firefighters' lifts and key firefighting equipment, required by the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022, in force 23 January 2023, for high-rise residential buildings.
• Floor and building plans plus a single-page orientation plan kept in a secure information box and shared electronically with the fire and rescue service.
• A fire risk assessment under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 that, following the Fire Safety Act 2021, covers the structure, external walls and flat entrance doors.
• Passenger lifts examined under LOLER every six months, in buildings where the lift is the only practical way up.
• Damp and mould managed actively, with Awaab's Law expanding the duties on social landlords through 2026.

The density adds the same complication Stratford's geography always has: many buildings, many residents, shared access and amenity, and a steady churn of works. Each tower is its own compliance unit, and a quarter of them next to each other is a portfolio that has to be managed as one.

New buildings, modern records, fresh expectations

There is an advantage to managing buildings this new. Much of the information that older stock has to reconstruct, the plans, the asset registers, the external wall details, existed in digital form at handover. The golden thread under the Building Safety Act 2022, described by the Institution of Civil Engineers as an accurate, up-to-date digital record carried through occupation, is far easier to maintain when it started as one. The risk for Stratford is not a missing starting point. It is letting the record drift after handover, as small changes accumulate and nobody owns the job of keeping the plans honest.

That is a habit problem, not a technology problem, and we have written about it in keeping plans in step with the building as it changes. A new building with a neglected record ends up no better off than an old one, having thrown away the advantage it was handed.

Many residents, one shared safety story

A tall residential block is a community as much as a structure, and the management has to hold both. Residents need to know who the responsible person is, how to report a problem and what happens when they do. The expanding duties around damp and mould make this concrete: the timescales under Awaab's Law for social landlords, which the Housing Ombudsman sets out as investigating within set working-day windows and making emergency hazards safe within 24 hours, only work if reports reach the right place and are logged the moment they arrive. A building that cannot show when a resident raised something and what was done is a building that will struggle to prove it acted.

For a quarter as large as Stratford, the practical answer is consistency across the portfolio: every tower described the same way, every record reachable, every duty attached to a named owner. SAMRISK holds each building as its own connected record so a cluster can be run as a set rather than a scramble. You can see how multiple buildings sit together on the buildings page, and the wider duties on social housing in Awaab's Law arrives: what social landlords must do now.

A modern quarter that has to stay current

Stratford is a useful case because it shows what the modern regime looks like applied at scale to new buildings. The duties are clear, the buildings are mostly inside them, and the starting records were good. The work is keeping that current as the quarter ages, the buildings change and the managing agents turn over. A new tower is not a finished job. It is the first day of a record that has to be kept true for decades.

If you manage in Stratford, treat the newness as an asset to protect rather than a problem solved. Keep the plans matching the buildings, keep the duties attached to named people, and keep every tower described the same way. The quarter was built fast. Running it well is a slower, steadier discipline.