We got the Grenfell rehousing process wrong and it’s time to apologise to survivors

Here in west London, we have invested greatly in housing management in the past 12 months and reduced our repairs backlog to around 500 – it is still not enough, and I am pushing officers to go further. But the issues I have witnessed stretch far beyond repairs.

In Kensington and Chelsea, we are now so far behind that we have calculated the bill, just to bring our housing estates up to scratch, is more than £300m. A similar story to most boroughs in London and in other cities around the country.

What is unique in our borough is that the council has also invested over £200m in securing over 300 homes for families from Grenfell Tower over the past two years.

But financial figures only tell half the story – it is the people that matter to me. That is something that has struck me more than ever over the past 24 months.

Initially, we bought housing as quickly as we possibly could to help families from Grenfell, and for that, as a state, we all now owe an additional apology. Let me explain why.

Housing and people are complex, housing people is even more so by its very nature. We all have different needs, different visions of what is good and bad and we all exercise our rights, wherever possible, to choose.

“Fuelled by the media frenzy for new homes to be provided, public agencies rushed the process along, purchasing expensive homes in Kensington and Chelsea and assuming – often wrongly – that they would be welcomed with open arms and we could make everything right again”

Put yourself in the shoes of a person who loved the home they lived in and then was forced to move to somewhere new – try and make that decision after an awful tragedy, where you lost everything you own or even the people you love.

Rehousing families in these circumstances is far more than just providing bricks and mortar, and we should have all realised this far sooner in the past two years than we did.

Time and again, central government, ministers, activists, MPs, the government taskforce, the prime minister herself and councillors – including myself – set arbitrary deadlines in the public domain for families to leave their hotels, choose their new home and move.

Fuelled by the media frenzy for new homes to be provided, public agencies rushed the process along, purchasing expensive homes in Kensington and Chelsea and assuming – often wrongly – that they would be welcomed with open arms and we could make everything right again.

All of us accidentally put pressure on, when pressure was the very last thing the families needed. So, if you think the housing process has been slow, I have no problem with people blaming us, blaming the state and the politicians. Just do not blame the families.

We cannot turn back the clock, we cannot change the events of that night but we can help now.

As we mark two years since the tragedy, the vast majority of the Grenfell community have moved into their new homes. However, there are huge challenges still ahead for families, for the wider community and for the borough.

We have been working hard to make the properties we bought for bereaved, survivors and their families become a place they can call home, working with them to do so in incredibly complex circumstances where trust, rightly, is not a given.

“We had some experienced housing officers making this clear to people two years ago, we should have listened more. But we are nearly there and we will not be rushing the last few families to meet artificial deadlines”

So rehousing families has not been simple but it was never going to be. We had some experienced housing officers making this clear to people two years ago, we should have listened more. But we are nearly there and we will not be rushing the last few families to meet artificial deadlines.

I can say that council staff have never stopped caring and never stopped working, and this will continue to be the case when every family is in their new home and starting to rebuild their lives. We are leaning on our NHS colleagues more and more because it is crucial that this is a long-term commitment.

The council and the NHS have agreed to commit a further £50m each for Grenfell recovery over the next five years. It is my mission to make sure that this makes a difference for people.

My focus is on making sure I do my bit, I’ve already announced we are spending £30m on the estate at the base of Grenfell Tower to make it a better and safer place to live – this is being designed with residents, for residents.

We are also building homes for the first time in decades, with 600 initially, including 300 social homes, and we have plans to build hundreds more.

The Grenfell Inquiry will continue to hear evidence and we will hear many uncomfortable truths over the coming months and years. But we want the truth. The inquiry should not be about defending our record on housing or otherwise. I am serious about our role in making sure a tragedy like this never happens again and that something good comes out of it.

Finally, I want to say this: no matter who our next prime minister is, the government will need to remember the commitments made to our communities, to the families from Grenfell Tower and to people living in tower blocks around the country. They are duty-bound to honour those commitments, and I will remind them every day as part of my role at the council.

Kim Taylor-Smith, deputy leader, Kensington and Chelsea Council and lead member for Grenfell recovery, housing and property