Calls grow for schools to be fitted with sprinklers as £1.6m support centre is opened for Grenfell survivors

Smoke rises from Grenfell Tower after a deadly fire engulfed the 24-storey residential block in west London
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A £1.6 million support centre is to open for victims’ families and survivors of the Grenfell tower disaster.

The Family and Friends Assistance Centre will help people access support, including NHS post-traumatic stress disorder and child bereavement support.

It will also provide guidance on the public inquiry into the tragedy, police and victim support, and the coroner’s inquests.

The centre, off Kensington High Street, will be the long-term replacement for a temporary base set up in Holborn after the tower block blaze on June 14 which killed about 80 people.

It will be run and funded by Kensington and Chelsea council. It follows pressure from survivors to provide community support within the borough.

Grenfell Tower aftermath - In pictures

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Nicholas Burton, 50, who escaped from his 19th-floor flat with his wife on the night of the blaze, said: “We requested it to be in Kensington High Street, and they have agreed to move it back into the borough and where people can actually get to.”

A separate drop-in general assistance centre will continue to operate from The Curve, in Bard Road, near Latimer Road station. Kim Taylor-Smith, deputy leader of Kensington and Chelsea council, said: “We are determined to do everything we can to provide the vital help and assistance victims and survivors need.”

Today a row broke out over draft Government plans that would not require sprinklers to be fitted in schools. A consultation was dropped after Grenfell so the guidance was never changed.

However it emerged that the London Fire Brigade recommended sprinklers in 184 new or refurbished schools last year, but its advice was taken in only four cases.

London fire commissioner Dany Cotton told the BBC that the draft guidance was “outrageous”.

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