Please tell us what you like and dislike about this area:

I like proximity to transport link, and the fact that it’s a quiet place – no cars!
It does feel like oasis in the middle of the hustle and bustle. And the architecture is original. Still feels like living in a hotel, in the most positive sense .
Local deli is charming with great coffee and Italian treats (tad expensive, though)
The trouble is that the development is rather new and we’re still waiting for our local supermarket to open. That’s the greatest deficit (COVID 19 has led to further delays)

Please share one thing (or more) which you wish you had known before you moved in:

I wish I knew that the quality of wooden floor is not the best – almost every smudge stays on it

How has the building management responded to any problems or issues you have raised:

Quite well, except for one case when my shower broke just before Easter and the initial idea of the management people was to fix it after 6 days. A bit of persuasion did solve the problem though.

That said the building location is excellent with commanding views of London and Canary Wharf. In the main personnel try their utmost to provide a good service and respond to requests. Communication with residents and owners is made through regular announcements sent via email. Facilities, when open and working, are good. The exterior aspect of the building design is positive. The interior is also generally positive. There are insufficient working elevators at any one time to deal with the volume of traffic leading to extended delays in getting to one’s floor. More emphasis on getting this right needs to be placed. Overall a good building when everything is working properly.

Please tell us what you like and dislike about this area:

Canary Wharf is a pretty condensed area with a range of architectural gems and concrete type squares. There are a wide range of places to eat, drink and socialise with the ever present river to add additional character.
Transport links are generally good. There are a range of hotels close by for any guests to stay in. Parking is an issue. While there is little need for a car, in principle, if you do have one it is difficult and expensive to park. There is little traffic noise or anti social behaviour. There is however a lot of building noise and dust in the area as development continues apace.

Please share one thing (or more) which you wish you had known before you moved in:

As stated previously, I found Ballymore to be a first class developer with a degree of humanity I did not expect.
Excellent pro active customer service during the sales phase
Was unaware of the poor after sales rectification of problems. Bad for buyers and ultimately bad for Ballymore.

How has the building management responded to any problems or issues you have raised:

They have repeatedly failed to rectify problems and I still have an outstanding issue after over a year. They have, to my mind, let down the entire Ballymore team and the exceptionally high standards set by te senior management.

Customer service and communication:

There was about a 1 year delay from the time I was told my flat would be ready to when it was and there was very little communication from the developer, Ballymore. I read that they were experiencing financial difficulties in the press so I contacted them because I was worried, they never contacted me and when I spoke with my neighbours they had the same experience. At that point as I had paid my deposit I didn’t have a choice but to carry on. For this reason Ballymore sold flat to Notting Hill Housing Association which means they are not contributing through service charge to pay for Concierge and Gym, hence higher service charge for private residents. Apparently those people will contribute to the gym only if they decided to do so from July 2019, however I haven’t seen that reflected in my service charge. When I moved in the girl who gave me my keys had only been working there a week and couldn’t answer any of my questions or tell me how things work inside the flat. It was a very stressful process and the developer was not helpful.

Facilities:

In the brochure we were promised we would have a garden, roof terrace, private residents only gym and there were lovely illustrations of restaurants supermarkets, florist and a 4 star hotel. It is now 2019 and there is a Tesco and a café downstairs which is not very nice, but the first restaurant, a Loaded Burgers, is apparently opening in a few months. I understand that the brochure was for illustration but where they proposed a restaurant is now an estate agent, they did not delivered what was promised. I feel this is a total Fiasco.

The gym was meant to be a private resident gym, instead for the first 5 years it was run by Nuffield Health who opened it to the public. This meant there were lots more people using the gym and coming onto the site, people who didn’t care about the facilities, hence treated them badly.  When Nuffield left Ballymore took over and made it a private resident gym – however we (leaseholders) have been charged for the gym to be done up, buying new equipment and fixing equipment that was broken by people who were not residents and lack of maintenance of the facilities from Nuffield Heath. It has a been a nightmare as a constant fight. Due to the mismanagement from the early days of the gym, the Steam Room, Spa Pool, Air Conditioning, Lockers, showers, Swimming Pool have constant disruption of operation, Ballymore contractors are very slow in repairing them, which means that there is always something out of order in the gym. The most notorious thing is the Steam Room which is constantly out of order for months or working poorly.

We still don’t have the promised roof terrace. Landloard (Ballymore) view is that if (leaseholders) would like to have a roof terrace, we( leaseholders) will have to pay through service charge to buy plants,  furniture and lighting, in other words we have to pay for what they should have delivered since 2011, Totally wrong!!!. The leasehold residents are complaining as this was a promised original facility and we should only pay for maintenance and not the installation. The gardens are falling apart and are not well maintained by the management since early days despite me highlighting this problem since I started noticing the deterioration of it.

Other buildings on the site

As part of the original plans there was meant to be a hotel and another building for service apartments which the latter was never mentioned to me. The separate building for serviced apartments  did not have street access. For 5 years we had large groups of noisy arrivals early in the morning and late at night as they had to use our main entrance. They would make so much noise dragging their suitcase through the communal areas. The 4 star hotel never opened so the serviced flats took over the second building, this now means they have access from the street so the noise has improved. The people in the serviced flats used to have access to the gym but this was stopped promptly.

Quality of the flats

I had hundreds of issues when I first moved in. One issue that lots of neighbours were all experiencing was a clear water leak from the toilet, this happened twice in my first year but we had to get plumbers in and sort this out ourselves. The flat looks good and I am pleased with it the big issue is whilst warm in winter they get boiling hot in summer. The corridors are like a sauna and the developer changed the windows in the corridor and keep the fire doors open in the summer which improved things.

Service charge

The service charge goes up each year without proper/valid reason. The service received does not correspond with the amount of money we pay for service charge. Cleaners do not get supervised therefore I have to complaint constantly about their poor performance.  Some neighbours do arrange some social events for residents but I haven’t been able to attend as they have been when I was at work.  Since I moved in in September 2011 has not been many leaseholders meeting with Senior Ballymore Management Staff, I can’t recall more than 3 to be honest. This give you a hint of how much Ballymore cares about its customers.

Ballymore has not shown so far the skills and knowledge needed to manage this kind of estate. I wouldn’t recommend anyone to buy a property from Ballymore, if you do you would regret the rest of your entire life as I do.

Please tell us what you like and dislike about this area:

The location is great because it is next to the station, it takes 18 minutes to get into Paddington and we are also close to Heathrow airport. I commute into central London and it is very easy.

Please share one thing (or more) which you wish you had known before you moved in:

I wish that I had known that Ballymore was not a trustworthy company and a lot of the proposed restaurants would not be completed or that they would not be here at all.

I find LCI perfect for young professionals with the amenities it offers. It is great having a gym and an outdoors heated pool on site, and the Italian restaurant downstairs offers the tastiest pizza I’ve had in London!
I like the design of the common areas, especially the ping pong and the pool tables, which are a great way to pass time on the weekend.
The only negative is that the facilities, especially the gym, often get overcrowded in peak hours, since it is quite small and the resident numbers keep growing.

Please tell us what you like and dislike about this area:

Within a walking distance, there’s a big Morrisons, where we do our weekly shopping, a Co-Op, Nisa, a small Superdrug, a few fruit and veg shops and Post Office. The area also offers a few small cafes with delicious and cheap all-day breakfast, a couple of pizzerias and, my favourite, a really tasty Turkish restaurant on the main street in Canning Town.
Right across the street from the development entrance, you can enjoy a walk on the river path with great views of the Thames and the O2.
You can easily get involved with the LCI community. We have a Facebook group which is updated daily and there’s often residents events organised, including Friday drinks once a month.

Please share one thing (or more) which you wish you had known before you moved in:

If the apartment is on a lower floor facing the inner yard, you will almost never get any natural sunlight in which can start to bother you after a while. On the other hand, I moved to a flat higher up with windows throughout and now my flat is boiling all throughout summer – sometimes it gets to over 30 degrees inside.
Most balconies are incredibly windy, which means you can rarely use them, especially if on a higher floor.

How has the building management responded to any problems or issues you have raised:

Johns & Co are the main estate agent who operates in London City Island and we have the displeasure to be their tenants.
We had multiple issues when we first moved in and our property manager were very inefficient in dealing with those. In the end, I met with their Property Management Director to share my concerns and complaints and we received our tenancy fees back as compensation, but fixing everything still took a whole month.
Later in our tenancy there was an issue with a communal pipe which had to be resolved with LCI’s building management. Both teams were incredibly slow and not proactive at all – I probably spent weeks chasing when it should have been our estate agent who was supposed to move the issue to resolution.