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Kensington and Chelsea Council leader voted in amid boos
The new leader of Kensington and Chelsea Council was voted in last night amid boos from residents at the full council meeting.
Elizabeth Campbell was voted in by Conservative councillors, who make up the majority of the council after Labour councillors refused to take part in the vote.
Ms Campbell told residents she is “deeply sorry” about the way the council had failed to support them in the aftermath of the fire but was frequently interrupted by residents shouting “shame on you!”.
Ms Campbell said the council had bought 31 homes in the borough earlier that day and was “scouring the borough for appropriate homes to buy”.
“I can tell you we have identified about 20 units on the market in north Kensington and we will buy them if we can,” she said.
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Ms Campbell said she would not “hold back” from spending the council’s £275m in reserves but these would not cover the entire cost, so she would be “knocking on the doors” of government and the mayor of London to ask for their help in delivering the homes.
There will be a total of 400 extra council homes over the next five years, Ms Campbell said.
The council will also be seeking to strike a “bespoke housing deal” with government, as set out in the Housing White Paper.
Ms Campbell said the deal should allow the council to “break the chains on borrowing against the Housing Revenue Account, to have more flexibility on how we spend Right to Buy receipts and to work more closely across boundaries with other local authorities”.
She also pledged to residents that nothing will be built on the site of Grenfell Tower “without the full participation of survivors and their families and those living in surrounding homes”.
Robert Atkinson, leader for Labour at the council, said residents had lost faith in the Conservative administration and Labour councillors would not take part in the vote for the new council leader. He called for the government to send commissioners in to take over the council immediately.
Several residents addressed the meeting. Edward Daffern lived on the 16th floor of Grenfell Tower and is a co-author of the Grenfell Action Group blog, which repeatedly expressed worries about the safety of the block prior to the fire.
He said he had been raising fire safety concerns since 2010 and had been repeatedly ignored by councillors.
“We came to you with complaints about poor workmanship, bullying by the contractor, bullying by the TMO,” Mr Daffern said.
Another resident said he and his family – his wife and three children – had been housed in one bedroom in a hotel and share a double bed between the five of them.
There were numerous calls from residents for Ms Campbell to resign.
One resident said: “The people must choose you, and we have not chosen you, so step down.”
Another resident slammed the council for its lack of support in the aftermath of the fire.
“For almost a week we governed ourselves; you lot were cowering in the town hall probably shredding documents,” they said.
Residents said they had been left out of meetings, or given very little notice when a meeting was about to take place.
