Ilford City Gates building collapse: Roads reopen after nine days
The area around the collapsed City Gates Christian centre has fully reopened this afternoon, nine days after the building fell.
Members of Redbridge Council’s highways team met with Ashe Construction – the main contractor for the City Gates development – at 1pm today to decide if it was safe to reopen Clements Road, Ilford.
The road was showered with debris after the five-storey building collapsed on Tuesday of last week.
But the road has been declared safe to reopen, and it along with Handforth Road – which was being used to keep cranes and equipment for the salvage operation – has been opened back up to traffic.
The steel frame of the building has been taken apart and the tower crane dismantled.
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The Travelodge hotel and the Virgin Active Gym have both been closed since then, with the Britannia car park also affected.
On Monday a crushed forklift truck, which was at the site when the building collapsed, was removed from the scene.
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The steelwork contractor for the build was DGT Structures, which fabricated the steelwork of the structure and erected it.
Its finance director David Drury said: “There are 101 reasons why that [the collapse] may have happened.
“At this moment in time we don’t know the reason for the collapse.
“No one would have contemplated this happening.”
The Health and Safety Executive is investigating the collapse.
