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Kensington and Chelsea Labour sets up Grenfell scrutiny group after council axes own panel
Survivors of the Grenfell Tower fire as well as other community leaders in Kensington and Chelsea have launched the North Kensington people’s convention to replace the axed Grenfell scrutiny panel, which was wound up by the council in July.
The convention, which has been launched independently from the council by councillors from the Kensington Labour opposition group, was officially launched at an event on Wednesday and will aim to represent the views and wishes of Grenfell survivors and bereaved families and scrutinise the council’s decisions around the recovery process.
It has been set up in reaction to the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) and Chelsea’s decision to close the Grenfell scrutiny committee in the summer, which had been running since the fire in June 2017 that saw 72 people killed.
Council leader, Elizabeth Campbell, has promised that issues related to Grenfell will continue to be scrutinised within the local authority’s five other scrutiny panels.
However, councillors in the ward say that because there will be fewer meetings there will be less time for effective scrutiny.
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The council has also set up a Grenfell community assembly that it said would give opportunities to residents to ask questions and receive the answers they need directly from the agencies involved in the Grenfell recovery.
However, Labour has been critical of this arrangement, with councillor Marwan Elnaghi, who represents the Grenfell ward, telling Inside Housing that “the assembly is pointless” because it doesn’t have the statutory power to demand that questions are answered and to summon government officials.
He added: “We are boycotting the assembly meetings.”
As part of the people’s convention plan, it is also aiming to devolve decision-making powers from the RBKC to North Kensington, which would operate independently from the west London borough.
Residents in attendance at the meeting on Thursday night said they were in favour of the devolution of decision-making powers to North Kensington because they believed that decisions regarding issues such as the Grenfell recovery and how money is spent should be made locally in the affected ward.
Kim Taylor-Smith, deputy leader of the Kensington and Chelsea Council, told Inside Housing: “While the local Labour group were busy hosting a political rally, the council agreed to start consultation on building hundreds of homes in the borough and tackling our housing waiting lists in the process.
“We also agreed plans for extra public spending on important local projects thanks to the hundreds of people in band H properties who agreed to voluntarily contribute extra money on top of their council tax.”
