Grenfell fire safety complaints by residents ‘glibly dismissed as moaning about minor issues’

Grenfell Tower
PA

Residents of Grenfell Tower were dismissed as “moaning about minor issues” when they tried to highlight safety failings before the fatal fire, an inquiry into the disaster has heard.

Housing bosses are said to have “glibly dismissed” concerns prior to the devastating fire in June 2017 that claimed the lives of 72 Grenfell residents.

Stephanie Barwise QC, representing survivors and bereaved families, told the inquiry on Monday morning that Kensington and Chelsea Council “enabled” a culture where genuine complaints and concerns were ignored.

She said the council and its arms-length Tenant Management Organisation (TMO) “adopted a dismissive attitude towards residents’ complaints, which was symptomatic of an approach to governance that created the conditions under which the fire could occur”.

In an opening statement to the latest phase of the inquiry, Ms Barwise said complaints from Grenfell residents were classified as “service requests”, and TMO officers drafted answers to complaints about their own work before getting colleagues to send the reply.

She highlighted messages between Robert Black, the TMO’s chief executive, the council’s director of housing Laura Johnson, and councillors Rock Feilding-Mellen and Quentin Marshall where the concerns of Grenfell residents had apparently been minimised.

“Councillors and officers shared in and encouraged TMO’s negative attitude to complaints”, said Ms Barwise.

Grenfell Tower was branded ‘a bad tempered place’ with ‘a general crossness [that] has lingered and is stoked by various intervals with their own agenda’, characterising at least some residents as ‘a group of people who are moaning about minor issues’ who were ‘not taken seriously’.

“Even fire safety concerns were glibly dismissed. This impacted upon the nature of the briefings given to councillors.”

The latest phase of the inquiry will explore the way Grenfell Tower was managed by the council and its TMO, how complaints from residents were dealt with, and fire safety compliance.

Danny Friedman QC, representing another group of survivors and bereaved, said the Grenfell Action Group (GAG) was denied access to vital information in 2014 when the tower was being refurbished, amid concerns about fire safety and the use of cheaper materials.

“The TMO knew...they were hiding it from GAG, because GAG would likely expose it”, he said. “Thus this critical failure of consultation was not just about bad organisational culture, but about a deliberate cover up.”

Richard Millett QC, counsel to the inquiry, said this morning the council has made a series of admissions in its opening statement to this part of the inquiry.

“It acknowledges that the number of officers devoted to monitoring the TMO was insufficient, given the number of residents and properties managed by the TMO and the scale and importance of duties delegated to the TMO”, he said.

“(The council) recognises that as part of the arrangements for scrutinising the TMO it never made fire safety subject to key performance indicators.”

The TMO has not made any concessions in its opening statement, the hearing was told.

Grenfell residents and fire survivors are set to give evidence from next week on their contact with the TMO and council prior to the fire, when they tried and failed to raise the alarm about their living conditions.

Councillors and housing officers are due to be quizzed on their actions, and the role of Carl Stokes, the independent risk assessor at Grenfell, will also be scrutinised.

Ms Barwise said in her opening statement that Mr Stokes lack professional registration, had “invented some of his professional qualification”, and the TMO was “overwhelmed” by outstanding fire safety actions.

In his opening statement, Mr Friedman called on the inquiry to investigate how the tragic fire was linked to the way Grenfell residents were excluded from decisions on the refurbishment of their homes between 2012 and 2016.

“The governance and management of residents…was profoundly anti-democratic. It saw elected officials, delegated managers and chosen experts and specialists together monopolising a project that was all about the lives of others.

“Their lack of concern for the views of those others - whose lives they were literally building upon - was extraordinarily disregarding. They saw it as neither wise nor just, to genuinely consult, inform and listen.

“It is essential to understand that the root causes of this institutional indifference, scepticism and opposition to real resident engagement, was inequality. Hence, the Grenfell residents had no part in the choice of their architect, contractor, design amendments, or access to fire risk documents, nor any chance to be informed and cooperate in the predesign of their own evacuation.

“Grenfell bereaved and survivors must not only live with having been treated in this way, but also the knowledge that this robbed them of the opportunity to keep themselves and those they have lost safe by identifying the problems that those in charge fatally failed to identify and address.”

The inquiry continues with statements from the council, TMO, and London Fire Brigade due later on Monday.

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