Trapped: Lift failures leave Londoners trapped in their high-rise tower block homes

Londoners are being trapped in their own homes, sometimes for months at a time, because of widespread lift failures in the city’s blocks of flats.

Often dealt with as isolated issues in individual blocks, a joint investigation between MyLondon and the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) has uncovered how the problem is systemic, with fixes taking days, weeks, or even months often due to parts being unavailable.

Our reporters have visited dozens of tower blocks and medium rise buildings in the past 12 months and found 21 of them with lifts either broken on the day of our visit, or suffering persistent failures over many weeks and months. The vast majority of the blocks we visited contain social housing, often accommodating some of London’s most vulnerable residents.