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Grenfell residents ‘not listened to as much as they should have been’, council admits
A “mindset” existed within the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) that meant Grenfell Tower residents were “not listened to as much as they should have been” before the fire, the council has admitted.
A lawyer representing RBKC, which owned Grenfell Tower, told the inquiry into the fire today that the council failed to fully listen to residents both in terms of complaints as well as in other areas of resident engagement.
The acknowledgment was one of several additional admissions made by the council in its closing statement to module three of the inquiry, which delved into the management of the building in the years leading up to the fire.
Other admissions included that the number of RBKC officers devoted to monitoring Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO), which managed Grenfell on behalf of the council, was “insufficient” and that the council was wrong to oppose the introduction of a fire door inspection programme.
In a statement read by James Maxwell-Scott QC, RBKC said that its “analysis of the evidence” during module three led it to conclude that a “perception developed” within KCTMO that the complaints it received about the tower were “driven by a small number of residents whose views were not entirely representative of the silent majority”.
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This led to a “presumption within the TMO that the substance of complaints made by those residents lacked merit”, the statement added.
“This mindset was also present within the council. When it was told one thing by residents and another thing by the TMO, it was likely to start out with the assumption that what the TMO said was correct. The result was that residents were not listened to as much as they should have been. This failure to listen fully to residents did not just apply in the context of complaints, but also applied in other areas of resident engagement.”
In a separate closing statement, a lawyer representing the mayor of London said that the evidence during module three “confirmed the failures in communication and response by KCTMO to those concerned about safety was widespread” and that it “illustrates a culture of treating the tenants as sub-citizens and a sub-class”.
Anne Studd QC listed multiplied examples of “legitimate” fire safety complaints raised by Grenfell residents being ignored, such as the blog kept by resident Edward Daffarn that KCTMO blocked from its servers or the 2010 letter sent to KCTMO by Shah Ahmed that detailed a number of fire safety issues, including a broken smoke ventilation system that would not be fixed for another six years.
In a statement released yesterday in response to module three closing statements, Grenfell United, a group of bereaved families and survivors, said: “Our mistreatment by RBKC and the KCTMO is not a one-off, thousands of social housing tenants across the country experience this same contempt and neglect, living in dreadful conditions with their complaints ignored.”
In its closing statement to the inquiry, which was delivered yesterday, KCTMO said that its employees “were all well-intentioned and conscientious individuals who have made the vocational choice to work in social housing” and that it was “highly improbable that they would ever have deliberately and purposefully sought to deceive or disadvantage”.
RBKC also admitted that it did not carry out its role of scrutinising KCTMO “as well as it could and should have done”, but said “the story of the TMO is not a simplistic tale of an organisation that was obviously dysfunctional and failing” and that “overall the TMO was an improving organisation with effective governance arrangements”.
The council also reiterated that it was wrong of its head of housing, Laura Johnson, to oppose the introduction of a fire door inspection programme across its housing stock, as requested of KCTMO by the London Fire Brigade.
However, the council said that KCTMO “failed to make the best case for an inspection programme”, meaning Ms Johnson’s response was based on “imperfect information”.
The inquiry today also heard closing statements from Martin Seaward, representing the Fire Brigades Union, and James Leonard, representing Carl Stokes, who carried out fire risk assessments (FRAs) on behalf of KCTMO.
Yesterday a lawyer representing bereaved, survivors and residents described Mr Stokes’ work as “sloppy” and his FRAs as “actively misleading”.
Today Mr Leonard urged the inquiry to “avoid simply characterising individuals”, such as Mr Stokes, as “villains”, as doing so would “risk losing sight of some of the fundamental issues that existed structurally within the system that they were operating within”.
In its statement, the Fire Brigade Union said: “The failures of the TMO’s fire risk management system are more than individual failures. As seen in modules one and two, we have again in module three witnessed the culture of complacency, aspiring only to minimal compliance with safety regulations.”
The inquiry continues.
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