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Independent report: response to Grenfell ‘disjointed and rudderless’
Kensington and Chelsea Council’s response to the Grenfell Tower disaster was “disjointed and seemingly rudderless” and it failed to engage with tenants before and after the fire, a damning independent report has said.
The Grenfell Recovery Taskforce was sent into the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) in July to assist with and monitor its plan of action since the disaster.
In a report submitted to the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) last week and made public today, the taskforce said the rehousing process has been “painfully slow”, with 320 households still in hotel accommodation following the blaze on 14 June.
Just 26 households have been moved into new permanent homes, while 70 have accepted offers and 45 have signed new tenancies.
The report also said there have been too many accounts “from survivors and the wider community of poor treatment”.
It added that it is “reprehensible” that the tower has still not been covered, noting that this appears to be “for technical and legal reasons”.
The report makes 13 recommendations, all of which have been accepted by RBKC.
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The report said: “RBKC failed its community on the night of 14 June and in the weeks following. Prior to that we have heard that RBKC was: distant from its residents; highly traditional in its operational behaviours; limited in its understanding of collaborative working and insular, despite cross-borough agreements; and with a deficit in its understanding of modern public service delivery.”
It questioned whether the council would be a better landlord than the current arm’s-length body, Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation, which the council intends to wind up and bring in-house. It recommended a “full options appraisal” for the future of council housing in the borough.
It notes that the scale of the rehousing process is “unprecedented” and says the council’s policy of purchasing local housing “appears to be successful”.
However, it adds: “Unless it is able to finalise permanent moves, it runs the risk of a large number of quality properties standing empty, while survivors continue to live in hotels.”
Briefing parliament on the report today, communities secretary Sajid Javid said the taskforce is satisfied that further intervention in the council would not be needed, but that it would continue to scrutinise progress with the recovery effort “for the foreseeable future”.
The report identified four broad areas for RBKC to improve. It called for more pace in the delivery of the recovery process, greater empathy and emotional intelligence from the council, extra training for staff on dealing with trauma, and “much bolder” solutions.
In a detailed statement, the council’s Grenfell response team said: “The council welcomes the taskforce report. It contains much useful advice for the council as we work with the North Kensington community to recover from the Grenfell Tower fire tragedy.
“The report recognises the unprecedented scale of the disaster and the appalling impact this has had on so many victims, survivors and local residents. The report acknowledges that no local authority could have coped adequately with such a large-scale tragedy unaided.”
The taskforce will provide a further update in early 2018.
Elizabeth Campbell, leader of RBKC, said: “We understand the need to change the council. The way it works, the way it listens, and the way it acts.
“A new leadership is in place and we will do all that we can to put communities at the heart of the work we do and the services we provide. As the secretary of state said, we are a very different organisation.”
Update: at 9.52am, 07.11.17 A quote from Elizabeth Campbell was added to the story.
