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Kensington and Chelsea Council stopped housing families on waiting list after Grenfell
Just 19 households from Kensington and Chelsea’s waiting list were housed in the six months following the Grenfell Tower disaster, as the council focused on rehousing survivors of the fire.
A Freedom of Information request sent by Inside Housing revealed only 19 households were housed in the period, 14 of whom had been shortlisted before the fire and the remaining five who were in exceptional need.
At the beginning of this year there were 3,324 households on the council’s waiting list awaiting housing within the borough.
After the Grenfell disaster in June, at least 256 former residents of the tower and some of the attached low rises required rehousing within Kensington and Chelsea.
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The council said 62 had moved into permanent homes while 192 had accepted offers of temporary or permanent housing. As of March, there were still 82 households in emergency accommodation, mainly hotels, including 25 families and 39 children, a situation housing secretary Sajid Javid described as “totally unacceptable”.
A spokesperson for Kensington and Chelsea said: “The priority for rehousing in the past nine months has been for households effected by the Grenfell fire.
“Out of the 19 households housed besides [those from] Grenfell, 14 had been shortlisted for a property prior to 14 June and all had priority status for reasons including homelessness. The remaining five also had exceptional circumstances, including an elderly person with with rapidly deteriorating mobility and requiring special access.”
Pat Mason, a Labour councillor for North Kensington, told Inside Housing: “It’s a relief now that the blanket ban has been lifted. Residents obviously sympathise with those affected by the fire but they have been asking why can’t we also bid for properties that survivors from Grenfell don’t want? I have a family of seven that have been living in a two-bedroom flat for seven years because of the housing crisis in Kensington and Chelsea and then they were significantly slowed down for rehousing because of the tragedy at Grenfell.
“Personally I’ve had at least 20 cases that were put on hold from bidding because of this. I stopped counting in the end, it could have been more.”
