Eastbourne residents hit with repair bills of up to £40,000 each

There are more than 70 apartments in South Cliff Tower in Meads and each of the lessees has been asked to contribute towards the external refurbishing works estimated to be costing between £2.8million and £3.1million.

It works out that each of the apartments is paying between £39,000 and £44,000.

It comes after residents were asked to cough up more than £1 million between them some years ago to repair the tower’s lifts.

According to a document sent to all the residents, essential work was needed to “rectify original design faults at the tower, stop the deterioration of the reinforced concerete structure and restore the building to a pleasant habitable state”.

The report says that in 2015 concrete began falling from the building, which was originally designed and constructed in 1965.

In November 2016 Storm Angus struck the building and rain began to penetrate into flats.

Remedial measures were costed with the first option being £2,865,300 which equated to an average cost of £39,795.83 per flat.

A second option – to ease cash flow with the work being done over two phases and taking 19 months to complete from May 2018-November 2019 – was estimated at £3,195,000 equating to an average cost of £44,375 per flat.

Work is currently underway at South Cliff.