It is worth being precise about this, because the two places get treated as one. In the 2021 census, 25.6% of households in the Island Gardens ward lived in a house and 18.1% in a terraced house. In the Canary Wharf ward the same figures were 4.0% and 2.3%. Blackwall and Cubitt Town sits between them at 6.0%. The Island has a real stock of houses and low-rise estates that the Wharf simply does not.
That stock is datable, and the date is what predicts the wiring. There are Edwardian terraces on East Ferry Road from 1902 to 1907. There are the inter-war cottage estates — Chapel House, 120 properties built in 1920 and 1921, Manchester Grove from 1925 to 1926, and Hesperus Crescent, 108 houses built in 1929 and 1930. There are the post-war estates: Manchester Estate completed in 1961 and 1962, Schooner from 1963, Samuda opened in 1967 and Barkantine from 1968. Then comes the 1980s riverside wave — London Yard and Clippers Quay from 1984, Compass Point from 1985, Cascades in 1988, Cyclops Wharf in 1989. Each of those eras left a different installation behind it.
The Island is also heavily rented. In the 2021 census 42.9% of households in Island Gardens and 51.8% in Blackwall and Cubitt Town rented privately. Most private rented homes require a valid Electrical Installation Condition Report, normally renewed at least every five years. An EICR is only half the job: the report codes the observations, and somebody still has to put them right and re-certify. We do both, usually on the same visit.
One thing catches people out. Most of the social housing on the Island is not council housing. Across the three Island wards only 3.3% to 5.4% of households rent from the local authority, against 13.9% across Tower Hamlets as a whole, because Barkantine, St John’s, Samuda and Kingsbridge were transferred to a housing association after a residents’ ballot. In practice access, permissions and communal work go through a housing association or managing agent rather than the council, and we are used to working that way.
Across E14 the jobs that come up most often for us are lighting, EICRs, remedial work after inspections and testing.
Figures are taken from our own job records and describe the type of work only — we never publish customer names or addresses. See our completed-work gallery and guide prices.
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