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Grenfell Tower Inquiry diary week 75: ‘It still shocks me to the core that that’s how we treat our citizens in this country’

Insight13.05.224.30 PM by Peter Apps and Grainne Cuffe

This week the inquiry heard witnesses from the housing management body discuss their role in the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire, followed by a range of witnesses from other organisations which supported the response. Peter Apps and Grainne Cuffe report

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The Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO) was responsible for the management of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea’s (RBKC) 9,000 social homes.

Robert Black, former chief executive of KCTMO, talked down its responsibilities in the event of an emergency when he was called to give evidence on Tuesday.

“It was fully recognised that TMO did not have the resources to be able to respond to a major incident such as Grenfell Tower fire,” he said in his witness statement.

“In such circumstances, the RBKC emergency plan would operate as it did on the night of the fire from a very early stage.”

However, this is not actually what KCTMO’s emergency plan actually said. In fact, it explicitly stated that: “This plan can also be used for large-scale major events which would overwhelm the KCTMO’s ability to manage on its own, and which would involve the RBKC council resources.”

This planned conferred various responsibilities on KCTMO, including opening and managing a rest centre to cater for those affected, arranging roll calls of residents and identifying those with particular needs and vulnerabilities.

Following a prior large fire in another block, Adair Tower, in October 2015, KCTMO’s executive team noted a need for more involvement with RBKC on emergency planning “so that contact numbers and roles and responsibilities are known by all”.

Was anything ever done as a result? “I can’t recall, I’m afraid. It’s down for my PA to arrange, and I can’t recall if that happened,” said Mr Black.

“Is it correct that, despite this discussion… at the time of the Grenfell Tower fire, the TMO still lacked a clearly and formally defined role in the event that RBKC’s contingency planning systems were invoked?” asked Richard Millett QC, lead counsel to the inquiry.

“I would probably have to agree with that, yeah,” replied Mr Black.

‘So six days after the fire, there was still no clear communication or strategy?’

So what happened on the day of the fire itself? The inquiry saw minutes which showed Mr Black (pictured above) telling the council at 3pm on the day of the fire that KCTMO had “staff at every rest centre”.

But he does not appear to have provided an update about the condition of these centres, which the inquiry has already heard was chaotic and under-pressure, or the numbers of people attending.

“Why weren’t you in a position to feed in information about the numbers coming to the rest centres that your TMO staff were seeing?” asked Mr Millett.

“That information was coming from my staff to RBKC,” said Mr Black.

Another key issue was the fate of 845 residents who had been evacuated from low-rise buildings – known at the Walkways – which surrounded the tower.

These blocks were not involved in the fire, but they were damaged: flooded with water from hoses, doors broken in by police during the evacuation, and hot water, heating and cooking facilities out of action because their communal boiler was inside.

The buildings were also inside the police cordon, which meant residents could not return to their homes. Initially, RBKC was not willing to provide emergency accommodation to all of these residents. “Go and stay with friends and family in the first instance, but will house the old and vulnerable”, was the conclusion at a meeting attended by Mr Black.

But, oddly, this is not what his board was told, with their minutes recording “that hotel accommodation would be provided for all affected residents”.

“Why didn’t you clarify?” asked Mr Millett.

“I can’t recall. I mean, the only thing I can remember or I might suggest is that things had changed since then,” said Mr Black. He added that he was not at the meeting when this issue was discussed.

Residents from these homes who could not stay with friends and families were ultimately offered accommodation at the primary rest centre: the Westway Sports Centre.

But at a meeting the next morning, 15 June, the council noted that only 20 to 25 people had spent the night at the centre.

“Were you and others at the meeting concerned that these numbers were very low and ask the question, Well, where are the rest?’” asked Mr Millett.

“It was quite hard to get an understanding of the numbers and where people were, so…” said Mr Black.

The inquiry has previously heard that at least some of these residents had slept rough, unaware there were bedspaces at Westway.

Later that day, the council resolved to get residents back into their homes despite the condition, believing that they would not be able to provide emergency housing to all those affected.

“Was there any discussion about giving the residents of the Walkways a choice about whether to go back to their own homes which had no hot water or cooking facilities on the one hand, or to go to an emergency accommodation, a hotel perhaps, on the other?” asked Mr Millett.

“I’m not sure about that. I think the pressure was to get people to move back. I think that was a huge number of people, that if we could get people back into those homes, that would take the pressure off other aspects,” said Mr Black.

Meeting notes from 20 June suggested that confusion over what should be done continued to see residents given mixed messages, with the police telling some they had to “return at their own risk”.

“So six days after the fire, there was still no clear communication or strategy in respect of evacuated residents?” asked Mr Millett.

“It would appear that [way], yeah,” said Mr Black.

Teresa Brown, who served as director of housing at KCTMO between February 2014 and June 2018, also gave evidence about the Walkway residents this week.

Ms Brown said she had concerns about moving residents back into the homes so fast, but felt the decision had already been made by RBKC.

“I think they had made the decision. At this point in time, they had a huge amount of people in hotel accommodation in the middle of the summer and I think they had some very difficult decisions to make about where all these people were going to go,” she said.

‘All I can do is apologise. It’s very distressing I’m sure for everybody’

Among other issues, Ms Brown (pictured above) was asked about a list recording the status of Grenfell residents, which KCTMO was collecting and updating in the aftermath of the fire.

The list, which was on a spreadsheet being shared via KCTMO to the council and other organisations involved in the emergency response, noted those who were missing and those who were believed to be safe.

A version circulated at 12.21pm on 14 June listed Denis Murphy, the El-Wahabi family, Khadija Khalloufi and Saber Neda as ‘safe’. A later version also included 12-year-old Jessica Urbano Ramirez on the safe list.

All of these people had in fact died in the fire.

Ms Brown said she was unable to account for the mistake. “All I can do is apologise. It’s very distressing I’m sure for everybody, but I would look at later lists,” she said.

She accepted that this could have led to people being given the wrong information about their families.

Bereaved family members have previously told the inquiry the distress they felt after wrongly being told their relatives were safe.

Ms Brown was also asked about the system whereby KCTMO staff were recording information about residents on pieces of paper in the rest centres.

Ms Brown had gone to that rest centre to help when she arrived at the scene in the early hours of the morning.

KCTMO staff wrote information on “scraps of paper”, did not seem to have a system or to be capturing an accurate record of everyone that was arriving at, or leaving, the site and who they were looking for.

“We may have missed people despite our best endeavours… but I thought we had a process in place that was as efficient as it could be,” Ms Brown said.

‘Rumours that some [staff] are cleaning computer records’

Both Mr Black and Ms Brown were asked about emails sent between civil servants in the aftermath of the fire, which were scathing about KCTMO’s performance.

An email sent on 20 June, six days after the fire, by Sally Randall, then a senior civil servant in the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), noted observations from Barbara Brownlee, then director of housing at neighbouring Westminster City Council, about KCTMO’s response.

It listed a series of damning conclusions, including that the organisation had “no leadership” and that “traumatised” staff were “drifting around”.

“Staff preoccupied with likelihood of criminal charges. No one is taking care of the staff,” it continued.

The email said that work on the Walkways “could be done in two to three weeks but will probably take two to three months given no leadership or urgency”.

“If this was an RP [a registered provider or housing association] the regulator would have had a new chief executive in on day two,” the said Ms Brownlee in the email.

Other emails said “the TMO remain terrible” and that politicians were “working very quickly… on how they can remove TMO from situation”.

Mr Black said he rejected the criticism. “It’s government acting as it does, trashing everybody else without actually giving them a chance to address it, and it was easy at that time to slag us off, as this does,” he said.

He added: “It suited their narrative to get rid of the TMO. So, you know, it’s bury bad news and bury it on the TMO.”

For her part, Ms Brown said: “What I saw… our staff were staff who were focused on getting on with the job and doing what they could to support people, and I don’t recall us being dithering or unable to act or cope.”

KCTMO was ultimately stripped of its responsibilities for housing management in August 2017, with the news announced to bereaved and survivors personally by then-prime minister Theresa May.

‘You were greeted with armed police’

As well as the KCTMO witnesses, the inquiry heard from various other organisations that worked on the response.

These included local charities the Clement James Centre and Rugby Portobello Trust, both of which opened their doors to the community in the aftermath of the fire.

Clement James opened its doors at around 2am and began offering support, including shelter and food, to those fleeing the tower.

As the incident progressed, the charity also began gathering information on spreadsheets on their laptops about who was coming through their doors.

“Had there been a team of officials, as I assumed there would be, then I guess we’d have just been asking them what we could do to assist them,” said Clare Richards (pictured above), chief executive of the centre. “But there weren’t a team of officials, so therefore it was important that we took on that role.”

She said that use of these laptops was offered to KCTMO staff who arrived at the centre, but “they always turned down these offers”. A member of KCTMO staff also confiscated their records and ordered them to stop collecting them as “only they should be collecting this information”.

Ms Richards also explained the lack of information on issues such as emergency housing. “I’m sure there were all sorts of marvellous things happening behind the scenes, but from the perspective of us on the ground at a rest centre, there was a total absence of any information whatsoever,” she said.

Clement James continued to offer support over the next few days, with residents who had been sent to hotels returning to the area to seek support or information. They raised a variety of concerns: a feeling of isolation and a lack of information, through to the lack of cooking facilities and trauma associated with being placed on upper floors.

Ms Richards also raised concerns about the Westway Sports Centre, which became the council’s main site for supporting residents.

“It was quite an intimidating experience to visit,” she said. “You were greeted with armed police, which, fortunately, we’re not too familiar with yet, and asked to wear a wristband and then all the different services were on different tables. It just didn’t have that kind of warm, safe space that I’m sure they wanted to achieve.”

Ms Richards was also involved in Ms May’s visit to the estate on 16 June. Ms Richards said they only received 15 minutes’ notice that the prime minister was coming and their main response was to ensure they could continue “providing a safe space” for affected members of the community “and not to have a sort of media circus” when Ms May arrived.

Ms Richards said the meeting finished after a few minutes when the sound of protestors outside became audible and “[Ms May’s] security team said that, actually, she needed to end the meeting”.

At the end of her evidence Ms Richards criticised the lack of communication from RBKC. “How do you have a situation where families have lost their children and they’re left for days without anybody official having a conversation with them about whether there was any chance that those children were alive? And I find that mind-blowing,” she said.

‘It still shocks me to the core that that’s how we treat our citizens in this country’

The inquiry also heard from Mark Simms (pictured above), chief executive of the charity that manages the Rugby Portobello Trust, a youth centre close to Grenfell Tower.

Mr Simms arrived at the youth club at around 7.30am on the morning, having travelled from Nottinghamshire when he heard about the fire. Around 100 people were in the centre by this point “in various states of confusion and distress”.

He said his initial focus was meeting basic needs until more help arrived, “making sure people had got stuff to eat… really simple things like making sure that the toilets were constantly cleaned and things like that”.

The charity also distributed around £80,000 in cash to survivors, many of whom had fled the tower with nothing and had seen all their possessions destroyed.

“We knew a lot of these people, they’re people from the local community, and so we took it on face value and trust,” Mr Simms said.

“Some people were really reluctant to take cash, and there was a lot of paranoia and there’s a lot of pride at stake. So we really had to build up those relationships to say, ‘Actually, we want you to have this, don’t struggle through the day with no shoes, if you need shoes, go and get some shoes.’”

He said the provision of cash rather than donated items provided some “dignity”. “We had a lot of donations and stuff that came in, if you’re a size 9.5 shoe and we’ve only got 8s and 10s, you’ve got no shoes,” he said.

“If somebody was a vegetarian or a vegan and we didn’t have a sandwich, then they could go and get one… If you smoke and you ain’t got fags, then you don’t want to be bumming that off someone else, so go and get yourself some cigarettes. It was just that simple thing.”

During the morning, the centre became a space exclusively for survivors. Mr Simms said the area was being overrun with “press, pop stars, politicians and volunteers from all over London” and he wanted a space where survivors had some privacy.

“We told everyone who came to RPT [Rugby Portobello Trust] on the first day that we would be there for them on the second day and we would try and find out what the longer-term plan was and help them with whatever they needed,” Mr Simms said in his witness statement.

“Did you ever find out what that longer-term plan was?” asked Zeenat Islam, junior counsel to inquiry.

“I’m still waiting to find out now,” Mr Simms said.

In the days after the fire, the club cancelled its normal activities and focused wholly on responding to the fire. Among other things, it organised transport to hotels and hospitals, structured clothing provision, a pop-up pharmacy and doctor’s practice, provision of smart phones and laptop, and a home pack from Dixons chain store which included items such as TVs, kettles and microwaves.

“In all the support you have described, did you receive any support from RBKC or later the London Gold response team to assist you?” asked Ms Islam.

“No,” replied Mr Simms. “We’re a youth organisation in North Kensington. We’re not an organisation that’s geared up to deliver emergency response stuff. So we would have been an ally to the borough rather than a leading actor, and we ended up being a leading actor.”

He added: “I remain incredulous that this happened in London in 2017, and people were left to their neighbours to provide care, comfort and shelter, in one of the richest boroughs in the country, in one of the richest cities in the world. It still shocks me to the core that that’s how we treat our citizens in this country.”

“Two named volunteers… report that some of the housing staff were heard telling victims to ‘fuck off’”

On Wednesday, the inquiry heard from Rupinder Hardy (pictured above), a local authority liaison officer from Ealing Council, who attended the Westway Sports Centre from 17 June to assist with the response.

Asked for her initial reaction to the centre, Ms Hardy said: “It was astounding. It was quite shocking. As we approached the leisure centre itself, there were a lot of people. We saw the Red Cross desks outside, taking names and handing out wristbands. There was the police cordon up, police vans… There was a lot of media as well.”

Immediately, she set about removing the police cordon and the vans and arranging for the centre to be cleaned up, with bins outside overflowing and a jumble of junk around the entrance.

Ms Hardy said that she arrived expecting a handover and a walk through of the site, but there appeared to be no one in charge or available to provide this information.

“There really wasn’t anybody,” she said. “It was just bizarre, if I’m honest.”

“I didn’t expect everything to be flowing like clockwork, but I did expect to see some rigour,” she added. “Something that I would recognise as, ‘Right OK, so this is the process, this is what you’re doing.’ I didn’t feel that at all.”

Ms Hardy then sent an email to her seniors telling them she had “assumed control” of the centre.

“Why did you make that decision?” asked counsel to the inquiry Dermot Keating.

“Because there was no leadership on the ground,” Ms Hardy said. “Without clear systems, it’s a free for all. We needed to build a structure pretty rapidly within the centre so we could focus on the bereaved and the survivors.”

Shortly after 2.30pm, she held a meeting which included all of the volunteers at the centre – it was the first time they had been invited into an official meeting.

They raised numerous issues about the response, including that hundreds of people were in hotels with families separated, police tape outside the centre was putting people off from attending, body bags were visible outside, and some of the food being delivered was not halal.

Ms Hardy said volunteers also warned that residents were not being “treated with the respect that people should be afforded”.

“Staff were being rude to them and they just weren’t getting the type of support and response that they expected, the level of care that they expected,” she said.

The inquiry was shown a ‘situation report’ from the meeting, recorded by another staff member from Ealing Council.

“The volunteers raised a number of issues about rude and inconsiderate housing officers from RBKC and stated that housing officers continue to be problematic,” the report said.

“Two named volunteers… report that some of the housing staff were heard telling victims to ‘fuck off’.”

“Were you able… to observe or hear such behaviour?” asked Mr Keating.

“I personally didn’t,” Ms Hardy replied. “But that’s not to say it didn’t happen, because I spoke to several people, both volunteers and on the Ealing side, who told me that it did… It was absolutely uncalled for. I’m sorry I did not witness it. I wish I had because I would have taken more direct action.”

The inquiry also heard from Michael Adamson, chief executive of the British Red Cross. Among many other issues, he was asked about a problem which emerged with the volume of physical items donated to the survivors from around the country.

“Did you consider that the volume of physical donations, perversely, had an adverse impact on the emergency response?” asked Mr Keating.

“Yes, and this is very common in emergencies of a sudden onset nature, where people want to show kindness by giving something,” Mr Adamson said.

“The challenge is that something that somebody wants to give may not be what the person who’s affected by the emergency needs or wants.”

He said that at Grenfell, “there were nearly 200 tonnes of donated goods of varying quality” and that this “overwhelmed” RBKC, with responders spending time sorting through items.

Mr Adamson agreed when asked if cash donations allow “dignity and choice” by giving those affected “some autonomy over their circumstances”.

‘And that the absence of it was a serious failing?’

Finally this week, the inquiry heard the opening of evidence from John Hetherington (pictured above), who at the time of the Grenfell Tower fire was deputy head of the London Resilience Group (LRG).

He was questioned throughout the morning about the structure of London Resilience, an umbrella term for a host of groups that have duties in response to an emergency.

One of those groups, the London Risk Advisory Group (LRAG), was made up of members from a number of category one and two responders, such as police, local authorities and utilities. It maintained the London Risk Register (LRR), a document that provides a list of the principal risks that may affect the capital as a whole.

But a residential high-rise fire was not named as a major risk in the most recent version of the document at the time of Grenfell Tower fire.

Mr Millett said the closest thing to a fire risk the inquiry could find in the document was a wildfire or forest fire.

Mr Hetherington accepted that “in hindsight” it was a “serious failing” that a tower block fire was not considered a risk, despite two major fires occurring in blocks since 2009.

He repeated what has been heard by the inquiry numerous times: that it was accepted at the time that the building regulations were strong enough to prevent a large-scale fire happening.

Mr Hetherington said it now has been reflected in the 2019 version.

The inquiry was also shown an individual risk assessment, which provides more granular data on specific risks, that had no reference to any major London fire.

The description of a ‘complex built environment’ in the document included places such as sports stadiums and large educational settings, but failed to include dense housing or tower blocks.

Mr Millett said: “Did anyone from the Department for Communities and Local Government ever give you or your colleagues on the LRG any reason to think that a major tower block fire as a result of the presence of combustible materials in the cladding structure did not present a risk that you needed to consider for the purposes of the LRR?”

“No,” replied Mr Hetherington.

The inquiry continues, with Mr Hetherington’s evidence to carry on next week.

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