{"id":719622,"date":"2026-07-30T19:30:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T19:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/719622\/"},"modified":"2026-07-30T19:30:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T19:30:09","slug":"families-to-be-moved-out-of-billionaire-owned-tower-after-suffering-without-air-con-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/719622\/","title":{"rendered":"Families to be moved out of billionaire-owned tower after suffering without air con | London"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the fourth heatwave of the year hit the UK<\/a> on Wednesday, Benice Bodah and her three teenage sons braced for more scorching temperatures inside their south-west London home. The two-bedroom flat has a built-in air-conditioning unit, but it has worked only intermittently in the almost three years since the family were placed in temporary accommodation at Britannia Point in Colliers Wood. \u201cIt has not been easy, but what can we do?\u201d said Bodah, 48.<\/p>\n

Several councils have now agreed to stop housing families in emergency accommodation in the glass-fronted block after the Guardian revealed<\/a> they had been told they couldn\u2019t use the air-conditioning during heatwaves as it had \u201cnot been offered as an amenity\u201d for them. The 19-storey building is owned by Criterion Capital, set up by the billionaire property magnate Asif Aziz. The temporary tenancies can last from weeks to years and are managed separately by letting agencies, including the London-based Aura Assets Management.<\/p>\n

Benice Bodah, a Britannia Point resident, says the air con in her flat has not worked reliably. Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Wandsworth council, which has placed residents in the block, is now making \u201cimmediate\u201d plans to remove its tenants from the tower. A Wandsworth council spokesperson said: \u201cAs ever, the welfare of residents is our priority and we are working at pace to ensure suitable alternative accommodation is available.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sutton council said it had already stopped placing people there, and was \u201cworking closely with all remaining Sutton residents in the building to ensure they are able to move to other accommodation\u201d. Croydon council said it faced very high demand for temporary accommodation, and was not removing people, but had raised concerns with Criterion and that council staff had been carrying out \u201cwelfare checks\u201d with those in the block.<\/p>\n

Stuart Neaverson, a Labour councillor in Merton who has been assisting residents, has called on other councils that have placed residents in the building to follow suit. \u201cCriterion Capital, who own the building and the air conditioning units, need to explain how this could ever happen and why some residents are still going without while temperatures hit 35C,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The Labour councillor Stuart Neaverson says the building\u2019s owners should do more to help residents during the hot weather. Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for Criterion Capital said: \u201cAs the freeholder, we engage with our leaseholders and encourage them to work with local authorities to support tenants in these unprecedented circumstances.\u201d Aura Assets Management has been approached for comment.<\/p>\n

Since the Guardian reported that temporary accommodation households were prohibited from using in-built air conditioning, some have received letters saying they should \u201cfeel free to use\u201d it if it was working, at a cost of between \u00a335 and \u00a350 each month. However, some tenants are still without working units and others have said the additional charge is unaffordable.<\/p>\n

By Wednesday evening, the unit in Bodah\u2019s flat was working, but she said she had no choice but to keep it switched off because she could not afford the extra cost.<\/p>\n

Several temporary residents with tenancies managed by Aura told the Guardian on Wednesday that repeated complaints over inoperative air conditioning units had been left unresolved, in some cases for more than a year.<\/p>\n

One tenant, who is living with his 81-year-old mother, had given up on the air conditioning unit after the issue was not resolved last summer. Like Bodah, he said he would not pay the cost of running it for the remaining month of summer, and instead has two fans and keeps the blinds drawn.<\/p>\n

Another tenant, Sabrina Walters, raised concerns over her children\u2019s health as her one-year-old daughter was overheating and her 12-year-old had suffered cluster nose bleeds, which can be caused by overheating.<\/p>\n

Sabrina Walters will soon be moving out of the Britannia Point building. Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not fussed about myself, but when it comes to my child\u2019s health, especially at that age: she\u2019s one year old, she didn\u2019t ask to be over-dehydrated,\u201d said Walters. \u201cShe\u2019s clammy, so you can tell it\u2019s her body fighting to keep cool. That really pissed me off.\u201d<\/p>\n

The family escaped the heat of their flat by going outside, which they said was cooler, or would spend time in one room with multiple fans. The windows in their third-floor flat don\u2019t extend fully.<\/p>\n

It was only after Walters raised the matter with her local MP that her air conditioning unit was turned back on, after a two-week outage. She said other residents, including a mother of two, had told her that their air conditioning units remained broken. \u201cI felt bad even saying mine is on to be honest,\u201d said the 31-year-old.<\/p>\n

Before councils announced they had removed their tenants from the tower, Walters was relieved to soon be moving elsewhere. \u201cI don\u2019t like having to feel like I have to argue to live somewhere,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year Criterion Capital was accused<\/a> of trying to mass evict tenants in the weeks leading up to the banning of no-fault evictions, which it has denied.<\/p>\n

Aura previously told the Guardian the air conditioning was now \u201cfully operational\u201d. When asked about the email sent to a resident saying tenants in temporary accommodation were not given access to air conditioning, it said this had been \u201cissued by the building management\u201d based on \u201cinformation and operational arrangements in place at the time\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the fourth heatwave of the year hit the UK on Wednesday, Benice Bodah and her three teenage…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":719623,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-719622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=719622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719622\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/719623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=719622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=719622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=719622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}