The Lark, Nine Elms — Local services in London

Please read this before considering The Lark as a place to live. We have experienced repeat, catastrophic hot water failures during our time here.

Over the past year, we've endured at least six prolonged outages, including a significant one in January 2024 that lasted a week, leaving us without hot water or heating on some days for 24hrs+. Unfortunately, there's been a lack of accountability, compensation, or reassurance from management regarding these recurring issues.

As I write this we've recently recovered from an 18-hour outage, 10th April 2024. Once again temporary plant measures are in place, (see pictures) this includes industrial piping running through building fire exits. It's concerning that there's no clear long-term solution in sight for this ongoing problem, now extending beyond a year.

Furthermore, it's worth noting that building management implemented a 10% rent increase this year without offering relief to those who renewed their tenancy.

In light of these issues, I recommend potential residents inquire about the plan for addressing these persistent challenges before considering The Lark as their home.

For those seeking a more reliable living situation, I suggest exploring alternatives like Bloom by Greystar, located adjacent to The Lark. While slightly pricier, Bloom currently offers a 4-week rent-free period and may provide a more enjoyable living...

There is no hot water for several times(at least 4-5 times in a year), few months ago, last week and this week. And the Lark asked us to call the water company directly, said this is the hot water company responsibility? It has been more than a day doesn't have hot water. You are built for rent, and you suppose to provide good rental service, aren't you? Even normal house renting situation, landlord suppose to provide flat/house having hot water. Otherwise you suppose to provide alternative solution, this is not a livable condition flat.

How can you push everything to residents to deal with ourselves? We paid to live in such built for rent flat is to get good services handling by professional company, otherwise, why we even chose built for rent.

Plus, we almost lived here for a year, there are so many things broken, the door bell broken for months, the forge of door broken for months, the cinema projector broken for couple of times, the coffee machine broken, the receptionist is always not there or missing. When asking receptionist anything, they can't help.

During the summer, the flat is extremely hot, they claimed they have comfortable cooling, but the cooling system doesn't work at all, if outside is 28 degree, inside could be 30 degree with cooling system. Anyway, you paid a lot of money, but didn't get...

Genuinely the worst renting experience I have ever had in London (and I've been renting here for 7 years now). We wished we'd read the reviews before proceeding, if I could put 0 star I would!

In short, our process took over 2 months and by that point we still didn't have a signed contract. We viewed a flat mid October 2022 (I'm not even going to talk about how long it took to request the viewing) and chased for 2 weeks to put an offer forward. Then our references took 3 weeks to clear (instead of '5 working days') and 2 weeks prior to moving in, a Lettings Manager (finally as up until then, we never really spoke to an agent) reached out asking for our deposit. This is when he let us know that they wouldn't send a countersigned contract until 3 days prior to the moving date. Given our experience overall, safe to say we didn't trust they would and we felt pretty distressed so we pulled out. We actually sent an email to Kern Rhoden detailing the timeline, what happened to us and our reasons for pulling out and.... shock, we didn't get any response! They could have AT LEAST acknowledged our email to say they'll take the feedback...