Ed Daffarn: ‘So little has changed for social housing tenants since Grenfell’
Ed Daffarn lived in Grenfell Tower for 16 years, and advocated for residents. In a prescient blog post, written months before the fire and later read around the world, he had warned that “only a catastrophic event will expose the ineptitude and incompetence of our landlord, the KCTMO”. As the ninth anniversary of the fire approaches, he talks to Peter Apps
“So little has changed for social housing tenants since Grenfell.” @PeteApps talks to Grenfell resident Ed Daffarn on the ninth anniversary of the fire #UKhousingNine years ago, when Ed Daffarn looked up at the burning tower he had called home, he thought that, after this, things would be different.
“Standing under the smouldering carcass of Grenfell, I truly believed that it would be the catalyst for change, that things could never, ever remain the same after 72 people had lost their lives, after a community had been destroyed, after the failures of social housing were going to be made so apparent.”
But, speaking to Inside Housing in 2026, a few weeks before the fire’s ninth anniversary, he says he has been left disappointed.
“Nothing, or so little, has changed for social housing tenants in the nine years since then,” he says.
Mr Daffarn lived in Grenfell Tower for 16 years, and by the time of the fire had become one of the leading voices pressuring housing manager Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO) to improve its services to residents.
“Nothing, or so little, has changed for social housing tenants in the nine years since [the Grenfell Tower fire]”
The tower was plagued with some serious maintenance issues, complaints were being ignored and the refurbishment had been a miserable experience for many residents.
Mr Daffarn was a leading voice in trying to speak out on behalf of himself and his neighbours. There were meetings, official complaints, thousands of emails. He helped establish resident groups to speak collectively.
Residents collected signatures for a petition and Mr Daffarn gave a speech to the council’s housing scrutiny committee about the experience of the refurbishment, calling for lessons to be learned. And then there was the Grenfell Action Group blog, which he co-wrote with a neighbour on the wider estate, Francis O’Connor.
In the hours after the fire, this blog – and one particular post on it – would be read around the world. Headlined ‘Playing with Fire’, and written just seven months previously, it featured a picture of a burning building.
“It is a truly terrifying thought but the Grenfell Action Group firmly believe that only a catastrophic event will expose the ineptitude and incompetence of our landlord, the KCTMO,” the post read.
“Unfortunately, the Grenfell Action Group have reached the conclusion that only an incident that results in serious loss of life of KCTMO residents will allow the external scrutiny to occur that will shine a light on the practices that characterise the malign governance of this non-functioning organisation.”
Mr Daffarn would go on to be described in the media as a prophet for having issued this warning before the blaze, with many reports saying that he predicted the disaster before it happened. It is a description that has always troubled him.
“There was this horrible idea that went around after the fire – that we were prophets, that we had somehow dreamt about the fire or been visited by this kind of premonition,” he says.
“It wasn’t that at all. We never even claimed that we were talking about Grenfell, because we didn’t know about the danger from the cladding. I wish I had been aware. I had seen cladding fires in the United Arab Emirates on the news, and I was aware of them, I just didn’t connect it to the cladding on Grenfell.
“[The blog] was so much more basic than that. We were tenants, we were very aware that our landlord was unwilling and unable to deliver a professional service to us and that they weren’t in the business of providing housing services, they were in the business of housing for what they could get out of it. So that blog was much more of a general statement around the housing management.”
Powerless position
Nonetheless, one element of the post that did come true was the idea that the “catastrophic event” would trigger external scrutiny that would expose the dysfunction within KCTMO.
This happened through the Grenfell Tower Inquiry, which savaged the organisation’s health and safety management and general culture, describing “a culture of concealment that started at the very top”, one where “ignoring residents’ views” was “entirely consistent” with its general approach to housing management.
It had “lost sight of the fact that its residents were people who depended on it for a safe and decent home”, the inquiry panel said.
It was clear from the inquiry evidence that the TMO’s feelings towards Mr Daffarn had become personal: the organisation didn’t like him, blocked his Freedom of Information requests, threatened him with libel action, briefed its contractor that he was a troublemaker and a “rebel resident”, and even ran checks on his tenancy background in an attempt to find a reason to evict him.
Mr Daffarn, a professionally trained mental health social worker, says that this kind of behaviour is indicative of how ‘resident engagement’ can fail in the world of social housing. Too often, providers are only willing to deal with residents they like.
“As a social worker, I am very clear about the meaning of discrimination and discriminatory practice. Anti-discriminatory practice means that you have to provide the same level of service to everyone. That includes people who don’t particularly want you involved in their lives, along with people that welcome you in and offer you a cup of tea,” he says.
“It’s still the case today that social housing providers are only really happy to engage with the residents that they like, the residents they find non-threatening – who are kind of biddable, that they can manage and they know aren’t going to cause trouble for them.”
The inquiry’s findings are not quite what Mr Daffarn hoped for in terms of the revelations about KCTMO, though.
Its investigation of the housing manager was narrowly framed; the inquiry looked at its service through the lens of the specific responsibilities it had under the Fire Safety Order, not its wider culture or housing management. This means Mr Daffarn believes some of its worst nature remains unexposed.
“The blog was quite challenging. But that’s what it was meant to be. It came from a position of not having any power and trying to find a way of shaming and holding them to account and upsetting them into action”
The report also included a criticism of Mr Daffarn himself, writing that he “should have stood back and questioned whether his preferred methods were the only, or even the most effective, way in which the voice of the community could be heard. A more conciliatory approach on his part might have been reciprocated.”
This stung Mr Daffarn because, he feels, it missed the fact that for years he and his neighbours had tried to be conciliatory – and this continued right up to the fire.
The emails disclosed by the inquiry that Mr Daffarn penned are firm but scrupulously polite. He engaged in the complaints and appeals process, and the council’s scrutiny committee structure. He agreed, after the refurbishment completed, to a meeting with some managers at KCTMO in an attempt to begin their relationship again with a clean slate.
The blog, and its more fierce tone, was a reaction to not being listened to in other forums. Mr Daffarn always says it was an attempt to write like Punch or Private Eye, to provoke and satirise the landlord into action.
“I am disappointed that the inquiry team didn’t understand the powerlessness of the position that we were in. The blog was quite challenging. But that’s what it was meant to be. It came from a position of not having any power and trying to find a way of shaming and holding them to account and upsetting them into action,” he says.
“The report suggested that if we had been more conciliatory, we might have got a different result. But we had been. My emails demonstrate how conciliatory we were. That’s part of the evidence. It just didn’t make a difference.”
Tortuous process
Nonetheless, he says the inquiry’s words do not keep him up at night.
“I think they wanted to appear balanced, so they felt they had to say something about me as well,” he says. “I don’t feel comfortable with it, but I accept it. I can’t accept all the criticism they made of everyone else as fair and accurate and not accept what they said about me.”
Since the fire, Mr Daffarn has been a key part of the team at the bereaved and survivors’ group Grenfell United, which has worked tirelessly behind the scenes to pressure the government into social housing reform.
He has spent years in meetings, as the achingly slow process of green papers, white papers and finally legislation wound through the government machine.
“It was tortuous,” he says. “It was so difficult to make progress, particularly around the Social Housing (Regulation) Bill [now Act] and particularly around the kind of issues we were most focused on at Grenfell United, which were improving the way that people who live in social housing are treated by their landlords, and making sure that people who live in social housing are never treated with the kind of disrespect and inhumanity that we were treated with at Grenfell Tower.”
What has finally come out is a new regulatory regime that grades social landlords on their services to tenants, as well as their financial viability and governance; new professional standards for managerial-level housing staff; and, following the death of Awaab Ishak three years after Grenfell, new laws on fixing emergency disrepair within a set timescale.
Is it enough to fulfil Mr Daffarn’s feeling that Grenfell would lead to change in the way residents are treated?
“It [the Social (Regulation) Housing Act] took too long, it didn’t go far enough, and it took far too much campaigning from the likes of Kwajo [Tweneboa, the housing activist], Shelter and Grenfell United,” he says.
“But we have a social housing regulator, and it’s a regulator that can go into landlords, look under the bonnet, and make a grading of where they’re at. Do they have enough power? Are they able to go in often enough? Are they picking on the right social housing providers? I’m not sure that all of that’s perfect, but we’re in a place where we weren’t before Grenfell, so that is a move forward.
“But if Grenfell was meant to be the thing that saw social housing providers starting to treat their tenants with respect and with dignity, the Social Housing (Regulation) Bill has failed. I don’t think it provides the stick that is needed.”
Mr Daffarn hears and sees too much from people who still struggle to get their landlord to listen to them to believe that there has been real change.
“Whether it’s on a micro level or a macro level, residents are not being heard, they’re not being respected, and I think that is a great detriment to the well-being of how people live in social housing. If you’re not having your voice heard, then no one’s going to act for you,” he says.
In particular, Mr Daffarn was struck by the actions of Notting Hill Genesis, after residents had to be decanted from one of its properties in west London following a roof collapse in March last year. One of the residents was connected to the Grenfell community, and Mr Daffarn attended some of the meetings with the landlord to provide support.
“Residents just want to be treated like you would want to be treated if you were receiving a service. It’s not rocket science”
He remembers walking into the room and seeing six bottles of water and a packet of cheap biscuits on a plate.
“From the minute I saw that, I just knew,” he says. “If it had been an event that their senior staff were attending it would have been nice sandwiches, cups of tea. It said something about the attitude.
“And then as soon as the meeting started, it was the same: people weren’t having their questions answered, weren’t being spoken to with any real respect, despite what they’d just been through. It was the same old story, just like what we experienced in the tower.”
Mr Daffarn continued to support the residents affected by the collapse, and was shocked by what he saw.
“To be quite honest with you, I think I probably would have sooner have been dealing with the old KCTMO than dealing with them [NHG], because of the level of contempt, the level of disrespect for residents,” he says.
He recalls one woman buying some essential clothing items for her mother – who only had the clothes she had left the property in and was staying in a hotel – from a nearby Marks & Spencer.
“When she produced the receipt to the housing association, she was asked why she didn’t go to Primark,” Mr Daffarn recalls (see statement from NHG below).
He feels that the problems come down to the attitudes still prevalent within social landlords.
“The heart of it is that it’s about the culture within the organisation. It’s the values and ethics that your organisation has. It’s really so simple. Residents just want to be treated like you would want to be treated if you were receiving a service. It’s not rocket science,” he says.
He has lost faith, however, in the willingness of the government to deliver further change.
“Every secretary of state comes into the meeting, looks us in the eye, shakes our hand, promises us that they’re going to be the ones that are going to deliver the change that the previous secretary of state hasn’t done.
“And nine years on from the fire, we’re still in the same situation as we were. The present secretary of state [Steve Reed] is probably the worst that we’ve ever had, worse even than [Robert] Jenrick. It’s a low, low bar but it’s the truth,” he says (Mr Jenrick was Conservative housing secretary from July 2019 to September 2021, and has now defected to represent Reform).
Mr Daffarn says Grenfell United had a meeting with Mr Reed after he was appointed and set out the group’s three main requests: a national oversight mechanism to monitor inquiry and inquest recommendations relating to state death; the debarment of Grenfell-related companies from public contracts; and steps to clear court space for the forthcoming criminal trials relating to the fire.
After hearing nothing for seven months, the group had to email to chase the housing secretary’s office for a response, Mr Daffarn says (see government response, below).
“I think currently [the government has] lost the will to engage with bereaved and survivors. It’s all just about ‘build, baby, build’ and what house builders and big social landlords want now,” says Mr Daffarn.
“The idea of sitting in a room with politicians, trying to hold them to account, is something that I’m just not willing to do anymore. Those days, that time, has gone”
The group was also upset with what it perceived as a failure of communication over Labour’s decision to demolish Grenfell Tower, which was announced last year.
“I think that most people understood that at some point the tower was going to have to come down. There was never going to be a good time to do it. So, it was about communication, it was about making people feel that they had been involved with that decision, even if they didn’t get the decision that they wanted,” Mr Daffarn says.
“But they failed to do that in a really basic way. Angela Rayner came to a meeting, and as soon as she opened her mouth and made that decision public, she realised what a catastrophic mistake she’d made.”
The group had also hoped Labour would support a national oversight mechanism, seen by many as a key lobbying ask, given that warnings about fire safety were missed before Grenfell.
“We first brought the national oversight mechanism to Angela Rayner’s attention a year-and-a-half before the general election and she told us we were pushing at an open door,” he says.
“After they didn’t implement it, Margaret Aspinall from the Hillsborough campaign said to me she couldn’t count how many open doors she’d had slammed in her face. When she said that to me I felt like I’d been quite stupid, quite naïve.”
‘Meaning of true wealth’
Does he retain any of his hope that Grenfell would lead to meaningful change for social housing residents around the country?
“No, I don’t. In fact, the idea of sitting in a room with politicians, trying to hold them to account, is something that I’m just not willing to do anymore. Those days, that time, has gone.
“I think the time between now and the 10th anniversary [in June 2027], is to call out their failings, is to evidence their failings, name those that have failed us, and hold them to account that way, because I don’t think the government are remotely motivated to deliver anything for us,” he says.
Mr Daffarn’s journey began with an attempt to be conciliatory and work within the rules of the system, and ended with frustration and a decision to try to provoke change by criticising from the outside instead. His paths before and after Grenfell bear a striking resemblance.
“It always makes me smile to think that you took one tower in west London and shook it and all these incredible people came out. And really, I think that would have been true anywhere”
But he does not close on a totally despondent note. As we wrap up the discussion, conversation turns to some other members of the bereaved and survivor community, and the work they have done together with Mr Daffarn to pressure the government, support each other, raise awareness and advocate powerfully for justice and change.
Mr Daffarn reflects on the mix of talent, determination and community spirit that his neighbours and their relatives have shown.
“It always makes me smile to think that you took one tower in west London and shook it and all these incredible people came out,” he says. “And really, I think that would have been true anywhere. It’s what tower blocks, and what people who live in social housing, are.
“All the things said about Grenfell, that it was all about poverty, anti-social behaviour, illegal subletting – none of it is true. You meet the community and you can see what they’re like and how much talent there is in a place like Grenfell.”
He pauses. Whether writing on the blog before the fire, or speaking to the media or select committees since, Mr Daffarn has always been someone who can reach for a poetic and powerful turn of phrase when he needs to.
“They said it was a place of poverty,” he says. “But when you look at that community, what it was, what it still is, you can see the meaning of true wealth.”
Response from Notting Hill Genesis
An NHG spokesperson said: “After the incident affecting residents in McGregor Road, as well as keeping our residents safe, we wanted to meet them in person to listen to their concerns, answer their questions as best we could and ensure they were getting the support they needed.
“At the first of our many meetings with residents of McGregor Road we did provide refreshments, but will certainly do more in future to make sure we are making our residents feel truly welcome and cared for when we meet with them in person.
“Meeting at short notice when investigations are still under way is challenging and often means we do not have all the answers residents want. We always want to be as open as we can, as soon as we can – including letting residents know when we don’t have all the answers.
“We’re sorry we couldn’t provide more information at the time, but we followed that meeting with regular catch-ups and updates until residents could return home.
“In the small number of cases where residents tell us they do not feel our team demonstrated care and respect, we always investigate promptly. We have reminded all our operational teams of the importance of being extra understanding when families are going through the turmoil of being temporarily moved from their home. We hope to continue working hand-in-hand with our residents when the unexpected happens – in particular when they have to deal with the immense challenge of needing to leave their homes.”
After the initial meetings, further meetings were chaired by representatives from the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea to facilitate dialogue. An investigation was carried out into the alleged comment about Primark. NHG is understood to have found no evidence of the comment, but reminded staff of the need to be understanding.
A consultant selected by residents is carrying out an independent review of the response to the McGregor Road collapse.
Response from the government
A spokesperson for the government said: “We have been in contact with Grenfell United on multiple occasions since November and continue to engage with them on their requests.
“The secretary of state is working with colleagues across government on these issues and we are committed to ensuring what happened at the tower is remembered and never happens again.”
The decision to demolish the tower followed engineering advice that said it was structurally unsound. Ms Rayner offered bereaved and survivors the chance to speak to her before making the decision public and also met representative groups, schools and faith leaders.
It is understood that Mr Reed has personally pushed the issue of a national oversight mechanism within government.
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