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Grenfell Tower Inquiry diary week 77: ‘The planning hadn’t been done and there was nothing for us to be drawing on’

Insight27.05.224.30 PM by Peter Apps

The Grenfell Tower Inquiry’s examination of the aftermath of the fire concluded with witnesses from central government. Peter Apps reports

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The Grenfell Tower Inquiry’s examination of the aftermath of the fire concluded with witnesses from central government. Peter Apps reports #UKhousing

This week, the inquiry primarily focused on the actions of central government in the aftermath of the fire, with the examination of three civil servants involved in the response.

They were all in some way involved in the Resilience and Emergencies Division (RED), which sat within the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG).

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The role of RED was to provide a liaison point between the local council, which had specific duties (such as opening and managing ‘rest centres’ for those displaced and arranging rehousing), and central government (which would monitor the situation and step in if necessary).

But as we have heard in minute detail over the past two months, the local response to Grenfell collapsed.

The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) did not have a major staff presence at the tower, rest centres were chaotic, there was a vacuum of information and the rehousing process was botched from the start, with some of those displaced by the fire sleeping rough.

It has transpired that RBKC refused to call on external help, with its chief executive Nicholas Holgate telling colleagues “that looks like we can’t cope”.

The question for this week’s witnesses was how much they knew about this and whether they should have done more to address it.

‘The planning hadn’t been done and there was nothing for us to be drawing on’

A first point was how prepared the team was for a disaster like this.

Were its staff trained well enough? The inquiry heard that despite being “strongly encouraged” to undertake voluntary training by the Emergency Planning College (EPC), which delivers training on behalf of the Cabinet Office, only four RED staff members attended in 2014, 2015 and 2016.

Priya Malhotra, counsel to the inquiry, asked: “Considering training was strongly encouraged, would you agree this was a rather poor uptake?”

Gill McManus, a resilience advisor with RED, said: “It is low numbers. There [was] other central training that was on offer as well, which more staff would have taken up. But, yes, it isn’t a particularly high number.”

When Melanie Dawes (pictured above), former permanent secretary at DCLG, gave evidence she said the government was not prepared for the kind of disaster it faced at Grenfell Tower: one where a huge community of people permanently lost their homes.

“There was no precedent for an emergency that left so many households homeless and in crisis,” she said in her statement.

She was challenged over this by Richard Millett QC, lead counsel to the inquiry, who pointed out that emergency planning documents did envisage situations where large numbers of people were displaced.

Ms Dawes said Grenfell was particularly extreme, given that it involved social housing and occurred in a housing market with few easy options for rehoming.

“We had not previously thought through what a longer-term rehousing challenge might look like on this scale,” she said. “We had not rehearsed before what we would do if there was a huge rehousing challenge in a very, very expensive local authority that had almost no spare social housing.”

She went on to say that this hindered the response. “The planning hadn’t been done on either response or recovery, really, in my opinion,” she said. “And so there was nothing really for us to be drawing on.”

‘It’s important for our ministers to understand that DCLG carries significant policy responsibilities for fire protections standards’

What, then, of the day of the fire? Ms McManus (pictured above) was contacted by the duty officer at 3.30am to inform her of the developing fire.

But her immediate focus does not appear to have simply been the council’s response on the ground.

“We will need to put a note [together] at very least and will need to include building regs colleagues as I suspect there will be an investigation,” she wrote at 4.08am.

As the inquiry has heard at length, DCLG was also responsible for building regulations and the associated guidance – which would be thrown very much into the spotlight by the fire.

She mentioned in an email half an hour later that she was “looking for building regs contacts so we can give them [a] heads up”, and exchanged emails with Brian Martin, the official responsible for fire safety guidance, who wrote at 8.11am: “It’s important for our ministers to understand that DCLG carries significant policy responsibilities for fire protections standards and for social housing.”

“What would you say to the suggestion that your focus was more on building regulations at that time than questioning what the local authority was doing or having an eye to the recovery?” asked Ms Malhotra.

Ms McManus responded by saying that she was “very much focused on what was happening at the incident” and that part of RED’s role was “to ensure that those policy areas that have any input to provide do provide that”.

‘We were relying on it, but we weren’t looking to see whether it had happened’

Ms McManus notified Jo Farrar (pictured above), the deputy director for local government and an experienced local authority chief executive in her own right, at 5.55am on the day of the fire.

Her initial email outlined the fact that there were concerns about RBKC. “There are suggestions in the media that the cause of the fire could be neglect of health and safety legislation,” she wrote.

“Did you consider or anticipate at that early stage that there would be any problems with RBKC leading on the recovery, given that it was owner of the tower, and media reports that were circulating at the time suggesting the fire could have been caused by neglect?” asked Ms Malhotra.

Dr Farrar said that she did not, and that she believed the council would be calling on London-wide support through an arrangement in the capital known as London Resilience.

She then had a conversation with Ms Dawes, who “indicated that she knew Nicholas Holgate [the chief executive of RBKC] during her time at HM Treasury and would contact him to offer government’s support”.

Ms Dawes was asked about whether this prior relationship had any impact on her handling of the situation.

“Was it the case that you were more inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt or perhaps be more generous towards his management of the response than you otherwise would have been had you not known him?” asked Mr Millett.

“No, I don’t think that is the case at all,” Ms Dawes replied.

Ms Dawes then emailed Mr Holgate at 9.07am to offer support and asked him to “let us know – as and when is helpful – whether there is anything we can do”.

He responded, less than two minutes later, to say there was “plenty of blue light support at present”.

But DCLG was then unable to contact him directly throughout the rest of the first day. Dr Farrar texted and called him but did not get through. No one from RBKC attended the first meeting at 9.30am that morning.

As a result, they were unaware that RBKC was struggling to cope with the issue on its own – and not calling on the London-wide arrangements for support.

Ms Dawes accepted that this was a flaw in the government’s response: “We were relying on [the London-wide arrangements], but we weren’t looking to see whether it had happened, and I think that’s one of the big gaps that I feel Jo and I and others didn’t fill in those early days, is checking that those arrangements were there.”

Instead, the assumption was that since RBKC was not calling on the government for support, it did not need any.

Dr Farrar was informed by Ms Dawes at 3.30pm that RBKC “had the situation under control and didn’t need any central government support”. This was based solely on the 9.09am email from Mr Holgate.

In reality, on the ground, the situation was chaotic. Bereaved relatives faced hostile police officers, with no one around to give them information about their loved ones.

Rest centres were overwhelmed and uncomfortable, and the council was struggling to find suitable emergency accommodation – particularly for 845 people evacuated from the low-rise blocks next to Grenfell Tower.

‘I’m worried for the sake of the government as a whole what will happen if DCLG do start taking the lead’

By the next day, media reports of this situation were beginning to come through – and more senior levels of government were concerned.

At 9.12am, Sir Jeremy Heywood, the head of the civil service, emailed Ms Dawes to say: “Lots of concern here that [RBKC] is not gripping the aftermath re housing etc. Is that fair? Which of your ministers is now gripping this tightly?”

“When you received his email, did you share his concerns, or did they come as a surprise to you?” asked Mr Millett.

“This was quite early for us to be hearing those concerns, and so I don’t think – I think his email was probably one of the first that I saw that began to express those concerns,” said Ms Dawes. She did not reply to him until the end of the day.

“Why didn’t you get on to him by email in response and say, ‘What do you mean? What exactly is the problem?’” asked Mr Millett.

“Well, I don’t think I needed to. I think he was being quite clear, actually, that there were problems with rehousing, and we were hearing that from others as well. So, you know, I don’t know, really,” she said.

There were also concerns about DCLG itself. Sir Philip Rutnam, the permanent secretary at the Home Office, emailed his colleagues on the morning of 15 June to say: “I’m worried for the sake of the government as a whole what will happen if [D]CLG do start taking the lead. On the basis of yesterday there is a real risk they will comprehensively mess it up.

“Both [Sajid Javid, communities secretary] and [Ms Dawes] seemed, frankly, to be at risk of panicking.”

Ms Dawes said she believed these comments were due to her wish to immediately announce a public inquiry.

“We believed we needed a public inquiry; we believed we needed it to be set up as quickly as possible,” she said.

“I had discussed that with Sue Gray [then director general for propriety and ethics] at the Cabinet Office… Philip was of the view that this would not be a good idea, and that is what I think he means by me and my secretary of state panicking.”

DCLG continued to struggle to get in touch with Mr Holgate throughout the morning. Dr Farrar finally secured a call with him at 12.30pm. Her notes from the call reveal that he told her the council had “found hotel accommodation for everyone in need” and that this could “roll over for as long as needed” – meaning residents would not need to move out.

Prior evidence before the inquiry suggests neither of these statements to have been correct – particularly with regard to the 845 evacuated from the Walkways (the blocks neighbouring Grenfell Tower), some of whom had slept rough.

Dr Farrar’s notes from the call also recall that Mr Holgate said: “Grenfell Tower residents have been complaining for a long time about the council… Several people could make it worse than it is and the council is worried they might need assistance from the police.”

Dr Farrar said she found this “surprising”.

“His opinion was that there were people that were agitating the situation,” she said. “I mean, personally I felt that people would be agitated if there had been an incident of this size, and actually the job of the council is to provide reassurance to the community and to be visible to the community.”

She offered central government support twice during this call, which Mr Holgate declined. “He was very confident that they had all the support they needed,” she said.

“Was he hostile to the idea of central government support?” asked Ms Malhotra (pictured above).

“No, he didn’t seem hostile, just seemed very confident that it wasn’t needed,” Dr Farrar replied.

‘At risk of pedantry, it also doesn’t refer to the building correctly, does it?’

By this point, Theresa May’s team at Number 10 were becoming increasingly concerned about the response to the fire. They asked DCLG to provide a briefing about its actions so far.

This was provided at 3pm, with the one-page document referring erroneously to ‘Grenfell House’, rather than Grenfell Tower.

“At risk of pedantry, it also doesn’t refer to the building correctly, does it?” asked Mr Millett (pictured above).

“No, it doesn’t, and I find that… very jarring and I’m sure that those directly involved in the fire must find it potentially very offensive and very difficult and I’m very sorry about that. It’s an oversight which I can’t really explain,” Ms Dawes replied.

“Does it tell us anything about the degree of engagement of your officials?” asked Mr Millett.

“No, I don’t think so, but it perhaps speaks to a certain level of stretch that was going on in the teams. This doesn’t look to me like a note that’s had a great deal of senior oversight or checking,” she said.

As the inquiry has previously heard, Mr Holgate joined a call with central government at 3.30pm on 15 June – at which he was unable to answer questions, and confidence in his leadership fell away.

Dr Farrar was not at this meeting, but was informed about it by a colleague.

She said this was “where it was becoming clearer that he was the sole gold [command, the code for the most senior co-ordinator of a response] for local authority, so wasn’t drawing in other golds from other places, and that there were concerns that were wider than housing”.

“You say that it then became clear at this stage that he was the sole Local Authority Gold at that stage; what would you say about your situational awareness and the department’s situational awareness at the time?” asked Ms Malhotra.

“I think information was coming through that was conflicting with other information that we had been given, such as, you know, the support from London Resilience [a group that can offer London-wide support in emergencies], and it was becoming a bit more obvious that, actually, London Resilience were less involved,” Dr Farrar said.

The inquiry has heard that Mr Holgate belatedly activated the London-wide arrangements following encouragement to do so after this meeting and John Barradell, the chief executive of City of London, joined to support the response.

Dr Farrar visited the scene with ministers the next day and helped to ensure that full control of the incident was handed over to Mr Barradell, as opposed to him simply playing a supporting role to Mr Holgate.

The inquiry has heard that the response did not improve immediately after this point, with some issues continuing for many days, with witnesses putting this down to the initial difficulties taking time to unwind.

Ms Dawes said she believed the main issue with the response was the council’s failure to call on outside help, although she added that it was “not clear” exactly what could be done to remedy this.

“I don’t think this is straightforward, because you could go in and be too overbearing of a council that was actually doing a good job, and that could create problems itself,” she said.

‘I’m ashamed of the failure of the system I was part of to provide fellow citizens with the most basic support and comfort’

Earlier in the week, the inquiry heard from the only minister who will be called for this section of its work: the former police and fire minister Nick Hurd (pictured above).

Despite not being a cabinet-level minister, he chaired the first government meeting on the fire on 14 June. He said he felt this was a mistake.

“We are talking about a situation in which the country has woken up to one of the worst disasters in our memory,” he said.

“We all remember how we felt that day and I just felt that response was not proportionate to the anxiety, the trauma in the community and in the country, and that people expected to see a more senior level of leadership from the start.”

As stated above, the meeting was not attended by Mr Holgate and featured no conversation about critical issues such as the establishment of ‘rest centres’ to support the community.

“Of course, this is unforgivable in hindsight, but in the absence of anyone raising a problem, the conversation moves on,” said Mr Hurd.

Mr Hurd repeatedly said the meeting had not been given a clear enough picture about the struggles on the ground, which led to him later telling journalists that “the resources are in place and the capacity is in place to support people”.

“That meeting was not adequately informed by the ground truth of what was happening in the area,” he said. “To my eyes now, in hindsight, there were clear failures of intelligence in terms of bringing the right information to that meeting and therefore, unacceptable as it looks today because it reads terribly complacently, I could only report what the feeling of that meeting was.”

He said he first realised the council was struggling at the meeting the next day when Mr Holgate was unable to answer key questions about the response.

“This meeting was a defining moment,” said Mr Hurd. “This was the first time, effectively, the council was open to question… there was a growing concern about data and the reliability of numbers and he really wasn’t able to answer some questions that anyone might reasonably have expected him to answer.”

He too accepted that the problems continued after control was removed from Mr Holgate. “If you don’t get a grip on these things early, then it becomes very hard to reassert any sense that the system has gotten the situation under control,” he said. “I think the perceptions were set very early and were very difficult to shift.”

Mr Hurd, despite having stood down as an MP in December 2019, remains a special advisor to Boris Johnson on issues relating to Grenfell Tower.

Mr Millett asked if this role, which includes consideration of the recommendations of the inquiry, posed a conflict of interest given his role as a witness.

“Was any consideration given within central government to how it could be that you could be a factual witness to the inquiry, but at the same time be the prime minister’s independent advisor in respect of it?” Mr Millett asked.

Mr Hurd said his appointment was “rooted in a desire to see some continuity” amid a recognition that ministers had “come and gone” since the fire.

At the end of his evidence, Mr Hurd said: “I’m ashamed of the failure of the system I was part of to provide fellow citizens with the most basic support and comfort and they had every reason to feel totally entitled to in their darkest hour.”

What’s next?

The inquiry will resume hearings the week after next (picture: SWNS)

This week’s evidence concludes Module Four – which has examined the aftermath of the devastating fire. It will not sit next week, before embarking on a module of evidence from expert witnesses, touching on a range of different subject areas.

The inquiry will then move to factual evidence covering the circumstances of the deaths of each of the victims of the fire. It is expected to conclude its oral evidence in July.

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