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Morning Briefing: council official called Grenfell Tower area ‘little Africa’, claims MP

A London MP has claimed that a senior council official working for Kensington and Chelsea Council described the area surrounding Grenfell Tower as “little Africa” and refused to visit the site after the fire, a number of the national newspapers have reported

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Emma Dent Coad, MP for Kensington
Emma Dent Coad, MP for Kensington
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Morning Briefing: Kensington and Chelsea Council official called Grenfell Tower area ‘little Africa’ and refused to visit, claims MP #ukhousing

The Mirror was one of the papers that covered the claims from Emma Dent Coad, Labour MP for Kensington, who also said that another council employee described the Grenfell area as “full of people from the tropics”.

Ms Dent Coad yesterday held a backbench debate in parliament over the response to the Grenfell Tower fire. Commenting on Kensington and Chelsea Council’s attitude following the fire, Ms Dent Coad described it as either “snobbery or racism”.

In response, the council said it would write to Ms Dent Coad so it could investigate immediately, if the claims could be substantiated. It also said it hoped that Ms Dent Coad would have reported the incidents at the time.

Domestic abuse victims are three times more likely to suffer mental illness than those that haven’t, The Guardian reports.

The paper was covering a newly published report in the British Journal of Psychiatry that found women who had been abused by a partner were more likely to suffer with depression, anxiety or severe conditions such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.

It also found that women do not always tell their GP about the abuse and only 0.25% of women on the primary care lists used in the study had reported abuse to their GP.

Elsewhere in The Guardian, the president of the British Geriatrics Society (BGS) has said that the UK is running out of care home places and soon there will not be enough to look after a growing number of vulnerable older people.

In 2018 more than 100 care home operators collapsed, taking the total number of care operators to go out of business since 2014 to 400. Three out of five MPs have said that people in their constituencies are suffering because of cuts to social care.

Professor Tahir Masud, president of BGS, said: “I’m concerned that we will not be left with enough care homes.

“Then where are all these vulnerable, older people going to go? At the moment, [the system is] just about hanging in and it’ll probably be OK for a year or two, but after that the wheels could come off completely. Slowly, things are going to wind down. Quality will go down.”

In local press, Derbyshire Live runs a piece on developer St Modwen pulling out of its housing commitments on a 196-home development in South Derbyshire.

According to the website, the developer initially committed to 27 affordable homes on the site but has so far only built 12, and now says it cannot build the remaining 15.

St Modwen has instead said it will now give the local council money to build four affordable homes in other parts of the district.

Colchester Borough Council has revealed plans to deliver more than 350 social rent homes for people on the housing register, the Daily Gazette reports. The council will look to borrow £75m through their Housing Revenue Account (HRA) over five years to support the delivery of the new homes.

Councils are now able to borrow this level of money after the scrapping of the HRA borrowing cap.

Plymouth Live reports on a new scheme that could see homeless women given alarms following a steep rise in violence and sexual assaults on women living on the streets across the UK.

The idea came from Fiona Melville, a graphic design student at Plymouth College of Art, who is currently fundraising to ensure that homeless women in Plymouth can be given an alarm.

On social media

Housing secretary James Brokenshire responds to the publication of post-Hackitt building regulations proposals:

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