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Grenfell Tower Inquiry diary week 76: ‘I fear this will become our New Orleans’

Insight20.05.223.30 PM by Peter Apps and Grainne Cuffe

This week the inquiry heard from central government figures and members of the London-wide emergency response arrangements. Peter Apps and Grainne Cuffe report

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Grenfell Tower Inquiry diary week 76: ‘I fear this will become our New Orleans’ #UKhousing

This week the inquiry heard from central government figures and members of the London-wide emergency response arrangements. Peter Apps and Grainne Cuffe report #UKhousing

This week the Grenfell Tower Inquiry continued its exploration of the aftermath of the fire, with evidence from those who attempted to support the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea’s (RBKC) response, as well as the first witness from central government.

The week began with the evidence of Mark Sawyer, chief executive liaison officer (resilience) at London Local Authority Gold (LLAG).

‘Looks like job done. Cheers’

Mr Sawyer (pictured above) worked within the complex structure that existed to offer support during major incidents affecting the capital.

But this operation could only step in if the local authority where the incident occurred requested it.

“There is no, as I’m aware, legal basis upon which Local Authority Gold can intervene in the affairs of an individual local authority. Therefore, it had to be a request rather than imposed,” he told the inquiry.

And as we have heard throughout this module, RBKC failed to request it. Nicholas Holgate, then-chief executive of the borough, rejected the advice of his emergency planner on the morning of the fire to do so, saying “that looks like we can’t cope”.

Mr Sawyer does not appear to have been unduly worried about this to begin with.

“Looks like job done. Cheers,” he wrote to colleagues at 8.18am on the morning of the fire, after hearing that RBKC had elected to keep control of the response.

“I would suggest that is likely to be the motivation behind that message, which was that it had been clarified that RBKC were leading the incident, there was no need for Local Authority Gold to actively be involved,” he said when asked about the email.

However, with concerns mounting throughout the day, Mr Sawyer was deployed to RBKC on 15 June, the day after the fire, to support its response. This was unusual.

“The fact that I believe I’ve done it twice in 15 to 20 years suggests it is unusual, and in both situations it was not as quickly as I was required to go in to RBKC, on the sort of 24/48 hours after,” he said.

He said it “started to hit home” throughout this day that RBKC was struggling to cope with the response.

“Were you trying to encourage, nudge, point towards areas to improve?” asked Demot Keating, counsel to the inquiry.

“That is a really good way of describing it,” Mr Sawyer replied. “And the other thing, whether right or wrong, I still felt I was a guest in RBKC – I had been allowed in, rather than having the authority to instruct and change.”

“Is a lesson that you’ve learned that you should have been more challenging in highlighting the extent to which RBKC were going wrong?” asked Mr Keating.

“Exactly, and testament to the fact that this was the first situation I had been involved with which required that level of assertion,” Mr Sawyer said.

‘They projected competence, professionalism, ability that I think in retrospect clearly was not backed up by action’

Following Mr Sawyer was John Barradell (pictured above), chief executive of City of London Council, who has been widely described as having stepped in to the role occupied by Mr Holgate once the London-wide response was belatedly activated on 16 June.

This, though, became a difficult topic because it is not what Mr Barradell said happened.

“Was it the case, to your understanding at the time, that once LLAG was activated, then the LLAG person, in this case it was you, took over and no longer supported but actually occupied the role of Gold previously occupied by Nicholas Holgate?” asked Richard Millett QC, lead counsel to the inquiry.

“Absolutely not,” replied Mr Barradell.

Instead, he said his role was to chair meetings in RBKC and that he “stood by them, not in their shoes”.

Katherine Hammond, a senior cabinet office civil servant who gave evidence later in the week, was among those to give different evidence on this point.

In her witness statement she said: “Mr Barradell took over responsibility for leadership of the recovery operation from Mr Holgate.”

“Was your understanding that he stepped into Mr Holgate’s shoes in respect of Mr Holgate’s responsibilities as chief executive of RBKC as a category 1 responder?” asked Mr Millett.

“Only insofar as they relate to this recovery operation,” she replied.

This, then, can be added to the list of issues on which the inquiry panel will ultimately have to make a judgement.

Mr Barradell also expressed regret at not being more forceful in asking to take over control of the response, adding that the “picture being painted” by RBKC was that it had sufficient capacity and expertise to deal with the aftermath.

“I think Kensington and Chelsea were a very confident council and they projected competence, professionalism, ability that I think in retrospect clearly was not backed up by action,” he said.

He also accepted that the some of the problems with the response on the ground – difficulties at the rest centre, poor communication with those in hotels – carried on even after RBKC was replaced.

Mr Barradell was confronted with the case of 12 families who were placed in a Premier Inn in Hammersmith with no money. They waited six days before being contacted by local authority staff about support arrangements.

He described the scenario as “not acceptable”, admitting that there were “deficiencies” in the process and said there was “a lot of learning about the support for communities”.

‘Community engagement has been missing from everything’

On Wednesday morning, the inquiry heard evidence from Emma Spragg (pictured above), who has been director for health and local crisis response at the British Red Cross (BRC) since 2016. 

Ms Spragg is responsible for a team that provides help to people in an emergency situation. She works with other organisations on plans and preparedness.

The inquiry previously heard that RBKC staff failed to arrive at rest centres until 10.30am on the morning of the fire, despite several requests for help from the BRC, which was present at the centres. 

Asked what impact the lack of staff had, Ms Spragg said it led to an “unco-ordinated response”, which impacted residents the most. 

She said that because the council is supposed to lead on rest centres and ultimately co-ordinate what happens at them, it was “very difficult to know who was in charge and, therefore, the sorts of things that were needed”. 

“So it had an impact on us, but ultimately it was the impact on the residents that was the greatest,” she stated.

In her statement, Ms Spragg said the council gave “insufficient regard” to cater to particular needs, for example people of faith or women, with survivors turning to local churches and mosques for support. 

She agreed with an assertion in an email sent on 20 June 2017 from Sue Redmond, interim executive director of adult social care and public health at RBKC at the time of the fire, that the “community engagement has been missing from everything”.

Ms Spragg said that she, on behalf of the BRC and the voluntary sector, was trying to put forward the point that to “provide the right sort of support means you need to understand better the people who need the support”. 

But she said “the structures weren’t there to do that properly”. She added it would have been beneficial to have had roles in place that specifically focus on community engagement and that “ideally” those roles would be “pre-existing”, rather than set up post incident. 

Ms Spragg said the BRC has invested in community engagement since the disaster.

‘There would be no incentive for me to disguise from you a COBRA activation at all’

Ms Hammond (pictured above), who served as director of the Civil Contingencies Secretariat (CCS) between 2016 and 2020, began her evidence to the inquiry on Wednesday afternoon.

The CCS is the executive department of the Cabinet Office responsible for emergency planning in the UK. It serves as a co-ordinator for planning, response and recovery, rather than having a more direct role.

It emerged that in 2014 only two staff members from RBKC attended training by the Emergency Planning College (EPC), which delivers training on behalf of the Cabinet Office, while none attended in 2015, 2016 or 2017. 

The inquiry was shown starkly different training figures for Westminster Council, which sent 47 staff in 2014, 38 in 2015, two in 2016, and one in 2017.

Asked about this discrepancy, Ms Hammond said: “I would expect them to have staff trained to an appropriate standard, but the EPC is not the only supplier, and I have no information on the existing qualifications of their staff.”

Ms Hammond was also asked about the National Risk Assessment (NRA), produced by the CCS, which is a classified cross-government document that assesses the impact and likelihood of the major risks the country could face.

The inquiry has previously heard that the London Risk Register, a document that provides a list of the principal risks that may affect the city as a whole, failed to include an urban tower block fire. 

The most recently updated NRA at the time of the Grenfell Tower fire also failed to identify an urban tower block fire as a specific risk. 

Ms Hammond admitted that the CCS could not find evidence that the risk of a tower block fire had been assessed at all. 

Mr Millett asked: “It’s the case… that even following the Lakanal House fire in July 2009, the Shirley Towers fire in Southampton in 2010, or the Adair Tower fire in October 2015, within RBKC itself, no consideration was given centrally by the CCS to whether an urban tower block fire should be included in the NRA?”

Ms Hammond replied: “It’s correct that one was not added to the NRA… I’m afraid we couldn’t find evidence of consideration of it. So I can’t be definitive to say that that consideration didn’t happen.”

Ms Hammond was questioned numerous times about the government’s failure to activate COBRA, the code name for a central government-led response to an emergency, deriving from the briefing rooms from where the response is co-ordinated.

Ms Hammond said the government did not enact the procedure, but instead had “ad hoc ministerial meetings”, convened by the CCS, to liaise on the disaster in the first few days.

She repeated throughout that there was “nothing different in practical terms” between the meetings and COBRA meetings. 

She later agreed that the main difference between activating COBRA and holding ministerial meetings was that the former was when the government had a leading role in the emergency response. 

“The central government role at that point was emerging and not yet clear,” she said. 

But these claims became confusing throughout Ms Hammond’s evidence, as document after document – including from very senior civil servants – made reference to the COBRA response to Grenfell Tower. One even said this response was finally handed over to a local recovery operation on 25 June – 11 days after the fire.

Time and again, Ms Hammond brushed off the suggestion that COBRA had in fact been activated.

“There would be no incentive for me to disguise from you a COBRA activation at all and I’m absolutely not trying to do that. This is just a shorthand way referring to a structure which commonly exists,” she said.

Asked if the government was “de facto operating COBRA, but just not calling it COBRA”, Ms Hammond said: “That is not a correct characterisation of the rationale.”

‘Did his presence indicate to you something of what was really going on?’

What then was going on with the government’s response? We saw that a meeting on the morning of the fire strangely did not include Mr Holgate, or any representatives of RBKC, despite them leading the humanitarian response.

“Was it a deliberate decision not to have the chief executive or anybody else from RBKC at this meeting?” asked Mr Millett (pictured above).

“I can’t recall a specific conversation, no,” Ms Hammond replied.

“Do you accept that not having Nicholas Holgate on the attendees list was a significant omission?” Mr Millett asked.

“I think at the time we would have been of the view that information about the local authority response could reach the meeting,” she replied, explaining that she hoped London mayor Sadiq Khan would provide this information.

Minutes of the meeting showed references to the provision of trauma counselling, but only to emergency responders, not the bereaved and survivors.

“Is it a fact that the focus in the discussions was on the blue light frontline personnel, in this respect at least, rather than the residents and the families of the deceased?” asked Mr Millett.

“I can’t recollect, I’m afraid, a discussion at this distance. No,” she replied.

The inquiry also saw that there were two versions of the minutes of this meeting. One included a reference to concerns being raised by Mr Khan.

“The mayor of London pressed for further reassurance and requested that contact was made with the local council to ensure that affected individuals are not left without accommodation,” it said.

But this reference was wholly absent from the other version which merely said: “Longer-term rehousing would also be the responsibility of the council. The council were not currently asking for additional support.”

The latter version was the copy Ms Hammond exhibited alongside her statement.

“When you did so, were you aware that there were at least two versions of this document?” asked Mr Millett.

“I hadn’t looked at other drafts of it, no,” she replied.

As the days after the fire progressed, various emails showed varying levels of concern about the response from within central government, but no direct action being taken to step in and directly take control of what was happening.

The inquiry saw that at 1.30pm on 16 June, then-prime minister Theresa May stepped in to take control of the response. A witness statement of one of her staffers said this was due to the “high priority she accorded to the need to ensure that the survivors were properly supported”.

These meetings were held in the cabinet office briefing rooms, where COBRA was held, but Ms Hammond insisted COBRA was not formally activated.

“This was very clearly a recovery meeting which happened to be taking place in those rooms,” she said. “I wouldn’t attach any significance to it.”

The meeting featured seven members of staff from Number 10, as well as unnamed members of staff from the Ministry of Defence.

On the evening of 16 June, Ms May had returned from her visit to the site.

“The one message that came over from my meeting this 2pm loud and clear was about the utter uselessness of K&C council,” she wrote.

“They haven’t been communicating with anyone. They tried to shut down the church centre I was at despite the centre housing people... Urgent thinking please about how we can ensure everything we need and agreed gets done.”

The inquiry also saw emails from senior civil servant Mark Sedwill, which noted that RBKC was “completely out of their depth” and said “we should have prompted a [Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG)] intervention earlier”.

“Did you share his opinion that CCS should probably have prompted a DCLG intervention earlier?” asked Mr Millett.

“Well, I think with hindsight, clearly an intervention was justified,” Ms Hammond replied. “I think the only earlier time it could have happened would have been on the 14th itself. And at that time, I think the information coming through, it was not clear that an intervention was needed.”

On the evening of 17 June, three days after the fire, Mr Sedwill wrote to fellow senior civil servant Melanie Dawes to suggest the situation may require a central government minister to be designated ‘gold minister’ responsible for the multiple issues affecting the response.

“They would have to drop everything else. I fear this will become our New Orleans otherwise,” he wrote.

Mr Sedwill was previously Ms May’s national security advisor at the Home Office.

“Did his presence indicate to you something of what was really going on, namely that there was a national security concern which required his expertise?” asked Mr Millett.

“It didn’t indicate a national security concern per se. It would be normal for very senior officials to attend meetings chaired by the prime minister,” Ms Hammond replied.

“The reason I ask you is because we know from earlier evidence that there had been civil unrest in Kensington, at the town hall, I think, before Mr Sedwill entered the scene, and there is, in his own words, a reference to Hurricane Katrina, ‘our New Orleans’,” said Mr Millett.

“The question is whether it was on your radar or CCS’s radar that, in addition to the local response, there was a risk of civil unrest, and that is why Mr Sedwill’s expertise was required?”

“No,” replied Ms Hammond.

The inquiry continues.

Grenfell Tower Inquiry phase two: weekly diaries

Module one: the refurbishment

Week one: A vivid picture of a broken industry

After a week of damning revelations at the opening of phase two of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry, Peter Apps recaps the key points