Residents warned council landlord about overcrowded flat before fatal fire

Tower Hamlets council’s failure to stop overcrowding has sparked allegations of ‘negligence’ by residents’ association

Residents repeatedly warned a council landlord about a dangerously overcrowded flat but the problem was not solved before a fatal fire left one man dead, the Guardian has learned.

At least 18 men, mostly students and delivery couriers from Bangladesh, were squeezed into bunk beds in a two-bedroom flat in the Maddocks House council block in Tower Hamlets, east London. Some residents slept in the kitchen, a source said, and the tenants together paid the flat’s private leaseholder owner about £8,000 a month.