A father-of-two has described the moment the block of flats he lives in with his family “shook” as a lift crashed down several floors after a safety malfunction.

Shaun Dunne lives in Blendworth Point in Roehampton, where a lift malfunctioned on the evening of Friday, June 17, dropping down the shaft at approximately 10.20pm.

Wandsworth Times:

June 20: Building 'shook' after lift malfunctions in Roehampton flats

He said: “I was sitting in the front room and heard a noise that sounded like something quite heavy was going down the bin chute. It shook the whole building.

“I got up, got my fiancee up, and it woke my son up. We did not know what it was.”

Mr Dunne, 33, said he went outside to the hallway and spoke to a neighbour before going downstairs to see what had happened.

It was not until he took his daughter out to gymnastics the next morning that he realised what had occurred.

He said: “I saw the engineers working on the lift, trying to open the doors on the ground floor.

“I asked if it had come down last night and they confirmed it had but they did not know from how high.

“We live on the fourth floor of 10 floors, and I told him I heard it coming past our flat so it was at least from there.

“Later they confirmed a cable had snapped and the lift had fallen.”

Wandsworth Times:

Mr Dunne claims he was told by an engineer that safety measures should have kicked in to prevent the lift falling all the way to the ground.

He said: “We no longer feel safe. Our daughter suffers with hypermobility issues so it will be a continuous struggle to get her up the stairs.

“Her ankles are quite weak and she can sprain them a lot, but we have been told to just use the other lift, though we are worried about that.”

The buildings have two lifts, one to serve odd number floors and one to serve even number floors.

Mr Dunne said he was worried about the state of safety devices in the other lifts because of what happened on Saturday.

He said: “I do not think they are saying what really happened and I do think it is a legitimate concern.”

A spokesman for Wandsworth Council said: “This was obviously a serious incident that is being investigated by the Health and Safety Executive, so at this stage we cannot comment in detail on what appears to be an isolated, one-off case. However we can reassure people living in our tower blocks that we take extremely good care of our lifts and constantly maintain and inspect them to ensure they are in good working order.

“We manage 609 lifts in total and they are checked every month by our contractors and also undergo further independent checks by our insurers every six months. We spend £1m a year on keeping them running and ensuring they are safe to use. The latest performance figures show that on average our lifts continue to work properly for just under 99 per cent of the time.”