Grenfell Tower residents told the council landlord three months before the disaster they were “seriously concerned” that people might die in a fire, but their fears were not properly addressed and they were treated as “sub-citizens”, the public inquiry has heard.
In spring 2017 leaseholders escalated worries that gas main installation in the evacuation staircase posed a serious fire risk and warned the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC): “If we cannot get out people will die or at best suffer serious injury.”
Lee Chapman, the secretary of the Grenfell leaseholders’ association, told the inquiry it was “a life and death issue” that “just wasn’t being dealt with” by RBKC and its tenant management organisation (TMO). He said their responses were “totally uninformative and generic” and there was “an us and them” relationship between the landlord and residents.
The inquiry heard that Chapman, who lived on the 22nd floor, warned the council: “It is very long way down … in the event that after 30 minutes of fire our house is engulfed.”
Weeks later, exactly that happened when fire spread from the fourth to the 24th storey in less than half an hour, killing 72 people. Chapman was away on work but his wife, Naomi Li, was at home. She only escaped after 3am, by which time the tower was fully ablaze.
Tunde Awoderu, the chair of the leaseholders’ association, also warned the landlord that the pipes “put our life in danger and we don’t feel secure in the building any more”.
The warnings emerged on the first day of evidence from tower residents about their relationship with the council and the TMO.
David Collins, a resident who became chairman of a residents’ group set up in response to “extreme dissatisfaction” with how people in the tower were being treated, told the inquiry the TMO viewed residents as “a distraction to be minimised, sidelined or ignored”.
“Residents were experiencing threats, lies, bullying and harassment from TMO and Rydon [the main contractor],” Collins said. A survey of 58 households by the group found two-thirds had felt pressured, harassed, lied to or threatened. A similar proportion “felt they had to fight TMO” to solve problems, he said.
In 2015, amid widespread concerns about standards of workmanship and the safety of design decisions, they struggled to secure meetings with the leaders of RBKC and the TMO, which considered the group “a showcase for Mr Daffarn”, an email released to the inquiry showed. Edward Daffarn, a 16th-floor resident, wrote the Grenfell Action Group blog, which in 2016 predicted a major fire.
Collins said such a suggestion was “a disgrace” and said 100 people from the tower had been involved in the group. Among its concerns was that a decision to renumber the tower’s floors “could prove dangerous in an emergency”. Indeed the inquiry has already found “firefighters were unable to identify floors clearly when carrying out firefighting or search and rescue operations within the building”.
Chapman represented a small number of residents who owned their flats and described himself as a loyal Conservative supporter in a letter seeking help from the then Tory MP for Kensington, Victoria Borwick.
He told the inquiry: “Ultimately we were people who wanted to feel safe in our homes, and this should not have been perceived by the TMO as something which was annoying or bothersome. I also believe that as residents in a so-called ‘social housing block’, we were treated as sub-citizens or sub-class.”
The inquiry heard that on 23 March 2017 the leaseholders’ association emailed RBKC’s director of housing, Laura Johnson, saying: “There are many people in this building who are immobile, very young or suffer from mental health issues, I would ask for your undivided help in getting this matter resolved for all interested parties.”
Chapman told the inquiry he “did not feel that these concerns were ever taken seriously”. Gas pipes were drilled through walls and boxed in “in the cheapest possible way”, and the residents wanted an independent expert to urgently check the safety of the works. One fear was that the pipes could easily be vandalised, potentially causing a catastrophic explosion.
Cladding rather than gas pipes was the main cause of fire spread, but residents smelled gas while evacuating the building, and when the gas main was finally switched off, the flames died down.
“I was incredibly confused by the TMO’s reluctance to engage with this as an issue,” Chapman said. “It didn’t make sense to me that the landlord would not be interested in this issue, especially as it was one which could damage their own asset if the works were unsafe.”
In late March the TMO’s executive director of operations, Sacha Jevans, replied that the TMO employed “a competent and experienced health and safety adviser who is supported by … a competent independent consultant who undertakes fire risk assessments”.
As a result, the TMO said, no independent adjudicator – requested by the leaseholders – was needed.
Chapman also detailed how multiple complaints about shoddy workmanship with new windows and extractor fans went unresolved. In March, April and May 2017 he complained to the contractor Rydon and the TMO about wind coming through gaps in the new windows, which had been “shoved on quickly”.
In April the TMO flagged the issue for handling “within 24 hours”. More than six weeks later, by the time of the fire, it still had not been fixed.
A “ridiculous noise” with the new extractor fan the previous September should have been fixed within days but again was unresolved more than eight months later.
The inquiry continues.
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In spring 2017 leaseholders escalated worries that gas main installation in the evacuation staircase posed a serious fire risk and warned the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC): “If we cannot get out people will die or at best suffer serious injury.”
Lee Chapman, the secretary of the Grenfell leaseholders’ association, told the inquiry it was “a life and death issue” that “just wasn’t being dealt with” by RBKC and its tenant management organisation (TMO). He said their responses were “totally uninformative and generic” and there was “an us and them” relationship between the landlord and residents.
The inquiry heard that Chapman, who lived on the 22nd floor, warned the council: “It is very long way down … in the event that after 30 minutes of fire our house is engulfed.”
Weeks later, exactly that happened when fire spread from the fourth to the 24th storey in less than half an hour, killing 72 people. Chapman was away on work but his wife, Naomi Li, was at home. She only escaped after 3am, by which time the tower was fully ablaze.
Tunde Awoderu, the chair of the leaseholders’ association, also warned the landlord that the pipes “put our life in danger and we don’t feel secure in the building any more”.
The warnings emerged on the first day of evidence from tower residents about their relationship with the council and the TMO.
David Collins, a resident who became chairman of a residents’ group set up in response to “extreme dissatisfaction” with how people in the tower were being treated, told the inquiry the TMO viewed residents as “a distraction to be minimised, sidelined or ignored”.
“Residents were experiencing threats, lies, bullying and harassment from TMO and Rydon [the main contractor],” Collins said. A survey of 58 households by the group found two-thirds had felt pressured, harassed, lied to or threatened. A similar proportion “felt they had to fight TMO” to solve problems, he said.
In 2015, amid widespread concerns about standards of workmanship and the safety of design decisions, they struggled to secure meetings with the leaders of RBKC and the TMO, which considered the group “a showcase for Mr Daffarn”, an email released to the inquiry showed. Edward Daffarn, a 16th-floor resident, wrote the Grenfell Action Group blog, which in 2016 predicted a major fire.
Collins said such a suggestion was “a disgrace” and said 100 people from the tower had been involved in the group. Among its concerns was that a decision to renumber the tower’s floors “could prove dangerous in an emergency”. Indeed the inquiry has already found “firefighters were unable to identify floors clearly when carrying out firefighting or search and rescue operations within the building”.
Chapman represented a small number of residents who owned their flats and described himself as a loyal Conservative supporter in a letter seeking help from the then Tory MP for Kensington, Victoria Borwick.
He told the inquiry: “Ultimately we were people who wanted to feel safe in our homes, and this should not have been perceived by the TMO as something which was annoying or bothersome. I also believe that as residents in a so-called ‘social housing block’, we were treated as sub-citizens or sub-class.”
The inquiry heard that on 23 March 2017 the leaseholders’ association emailed RBKC’s director of housing, Laura Johnson, saying: “There are many people in this building who are immobile, very young or suffer from mental health issues, I would ask for your undivided help in getting this matter resolved for all interested parties.”
Chapman told the inquiry he “did not feel that these concerns were ever taken seriously”. Gas pipes were drilled through walls and boxed in “in the cheapest possible way”, and the residents wanted an independent expert to urgently check the safety of the works. One fear was that the pipes could easily be vandalised, potentially causing a catastrophic explosion.
Cladding rather than gas pipes was the main cause of fire spread, but residents smelled gas while evacuating the building, and when the gas main was finally switched off, the flames died down.
“I was incredibly confused by the TMO’s reluctance to engage with this as an issue,” Chapman said. “It didn’t make sense to me that the landlord would not be interested in this issue, especially as it was one which could damage their own asset if the works were unsafe.”
In late March the TMO’s executive director of operations, Sacha Jevans, replied that the TMO employed “a competent and experienced health and safety adviser who is supported by … a competent independent consultant who undertakes fire risk assessments”.
As a result, the TMO said, no independent adjudicator – requested by the leaseholders – was needed.
Chapman also detailed how multiple complaints about shoddy workmanship with new windows and extractor fans went unresolved. In March, April and May 2017 he complained to the contractor Rydon and the TMO about wind coming through gaps in the new windows, which had been “shoved on quickly”.
In April the TMO flagged the issue for handling “within 24 hours”. More than six weeks later, by the time of the fire, it still had not been fixed.
A “ridiculous noise” with the new extractor fan the previous September should have been fixed within days but again was unresolved more than eight months later.
The inquiry continues.
Continue reading...