Essex weather: Manor Court residents forced to sleep in lobby

Top-floor residents of Manor Court, in Manor Court Road, were evacuated last night after strong winds pulled up the roof from three flats, causing significant damage and making it unsafe for people to stay in their homes.

A resident of the block of flats has described her shock, sadness, and anger at being forced to sleep on the lobby sofa of the block – as she has no family she can go to at such short notice and could not be put into a hotel.

Wendy Cresswell, 51, said: “We were forced to sleep in the lounge on the sofa, my management people cannot deal with the problems, and no one knows what company is in charge of maintaining the roof.

“We are waiting for the roofers to be able to go up there and secure down the broken roof and put tarpaulin down to make it waterproof for the flats without a roof.

“We do not know when top-floor residents will be able to move back in. 

“Due to the bad weather, people cannot get up there to put it back into place, the whole roof needs replacing in my eyes and the fire brigade are unable to do that.”

Wendy added her flat has been affected but not as badly as others, though her neighbour was forced to join her in sleeping on the sofas on the bottom floor.

“This has been massively stressful, and my neighbour came to me at 7.30pm last night to tell me that even more of it had come off, a massive chunk flew off into the footpath below.

“A lot of the worst affected have just packed up and moved on, one of the flats without a roof had a daughter aged one and another has a teenager, they just cannot stay,” she said.

An Essex fire service spokesman said: “Three flats were evacuated as it was unsafe for them to remain given the damage done by the high winds.

“Other residents on the top floor were advised to leave until the roof could be repaired properly.

"Once the crews made the scene safe, they left it in the care of the building owner.”