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KCTMO director claims he was never told to hand over Grenfell refurbishment notebooks
A key witness in the Grenfell Inquiry who submitted personal notebooks as evidence just two weeks ago has claimed that he was never advised to hand them over at an earlier stage.
Last week it was revealed that Peter Maddison, former director of assets at Kensington & Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO), had submitted personal notebooks to the inquiry covering the period between January 2013 and May 2017, more than three years after the fire.
Questioned today on why he had not submitted the notebooks earlier, Mr Maddison said that he had told KCTMO’s legal advisors, Kennedys, that he had a number of books in his possession but was not advised to hand them over.
Kennedys replaced law firm Devonshires as the TMO’s legal advisor in September 2017, the inquiry heard.
When asked by Richard Millett, lead counsel to the inquiry, whether anybody from Kennedys or Devonshires had ever asked him to look for and hand over the notebooks, Mr Maddison said they had not.
Mr Maddison also revealed that he had drawn up a timeline based on these documents in the period after the fire.
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He said: “In the weeks after the fire I went through and did a transcript of all of my notebooks to do a timeline of what had happened over the time, and did the same with my emails, and I sent that across to Kennedys with the heading ‘My Notebooks’.”
Mr Millett said that Kennedys had confirmed that it had identified a timeline by Mr Maddison dated 6 October 2017, which referred to the fact that his notebooks had been used to create it.
Mr Maddison then told the inquiry that in 2018 he had asked a partner at Kennedys what he should do with his notebooks, with the partner telling him to "keep hold of them".
He said: “I’ve never, since I’d done the transcription, I hadn’t looked at those books at all, and after I flagged them up to Kennedys and they just said keep a hold of them, and I have left them.”
He was also asked by inquiry chair Sir Martin Moore-Bick why it did not occur to him to remind Kennedys of the timeline, but Mr Maddison said that the process was unfamiliar and was using the advice of solicitors.
He said that since pulling together the timeline in 2017, he had not referred to the notebooks, and was triggered into remembering about them only when watching other witnesses from the TMO.
“I flagged that up to Kennedys and immediately they disclosed them,” he said.
Mr Millett confirmed that the inquiry team had been in correspondence with Kennedys over the notebooks but that it was waiting to hear from Devonshires.
The inquiry continues.
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