Category Archives: Grenfell Tower fire

Michael Gove ‘open’ to keeping Grenfell Tower as a memorial

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Housing secretary’s intervention follows speculation that the building would be demolished because of structural fears

Michael Gove has signalled he will explore “retention” options to preserve Grenfell Tower as a memorial to the 72 people killed in the 2017 fire, a move that has been welcomed by relatives of the dead.

The new housing secretary’s intervention, weeks into his latest post, follows speculation that Grenfell would be demolished because of safety concerns. It is understood his predecessor, Robert Jenrick, had been briefed that the tower posed a risk to the local west London community with government-appointed structural engineers indicating it should be razed.

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Footage of Grenfell Tower meetings before fire to be shown for first time

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Channel 4’s Grenfell: The Untold Story will include previously unseen recordings of pleas to former MP and landlord executive

Previously unseen footage of Grenfell Tower residents pleading with their MP and landlord to end their mistreatment in the months before the 2017 disaster is to be broadcast for the first time.

Recordings of acrimonious meetings with Victoria Borwick, the then Conservative MP for the area, and Peter Maddison, the council landlord’s senior executive in charge of works at the time, shed fresh light on how the concerns of residents were handled in the run-up to the fire on 14 June 2017.

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Grenfell Tower set to be demolished over safety concerns

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Structural experts have ‘unambiguously’ advised that building poses a risk and should be carefully taken down

Ministers are expected to announce this month that Grenfell Tower will be demolished because of safety concerns, more than four years after the fire that killed 72 people.

Robert Jenrick, the housing secretary, has been told that the building poses a risk to the local community including the Kensington Aldridge Academy in west London, a secondary school located near the charred remains.

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Milan mayor likens tower block fire to Grenfell disaster

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Experts say combustible materials were used in 20-storey building that went up in flames with no loss of life

The mayor of Milan has compared a fire that ripped through a 20-storey residential building on Sunday to the Grenfell Tower blaze in London that killed 72 people four years ago.

The fire, which started on the upper floors of the tower on the southern outskirts of the capital of the Lombardy region, spread to the rest of the building owing to what experts described as the “chimney effect”, which turned the building into a torch.

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Former Grenfell management chief ‘kept board in dark’ over safety issues

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Public inquiry into June 2017 disaster hears that Robert Black failed to mention numerous risks and problems following review

The former boss of Grenfell Tower’s management body repeatedly failed to alert residents and councillors overseeing its work to serious fire safety issues and has admitted to “keeping the board in the dark”.

Robert Black, who was chief executive of the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO) at the time of the fire, did not tell boards at the council and the arm’s-length management body about problems with smoke extractors at Grenfell, a deficiency notice issued by London fire brigade on the tower, or problems with fire doors at another block that suffered a fire.

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Grenfell: councillor was told about cheaper cladding plan before fire

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Rock Feilding-Mellen said he was emailed about potential cladding change but didn’t understand significance

Rock Feilding-Mellen, the Tory councillor in charge of the Grenfell Tower refurbishment, was informed of plans to save money by swapping zinc cladding for aluminium in 2014 but initially told police he only knew about it after the June 2017 fire, a statement released to the public inquiry show.

The switch led to the use of combustible cladding that became the main cause of the fire’s spread. Feilding-Mellen, the cabinet member for housing at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London, said he had no idea about the different properties of the two materials.

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Grenfell Tower landlord ‘blocked staff access to residents’ blog’

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KCTMO censored blog by Grenfell Action Group which warned of a potentially disastrous fire, inquiry hears

Grenfell Tower’s landlord blocked staff computers from accessing a residents’ blog which raised concerns about the building’s refurbishment and warned of a potentially disastrous fire, the inquiry into the 14 June 2017 blaze has heard.

The Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (TMO) considered the Grenfell Action Group blog “scaremongering and potentially frightening to the residents”. It blocked access to it on its servers so staff working on the project could not view posts from around 2013 onwards.

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Grenfell landlord didn’t take ‘risk of another fire seriously’, inquiry told

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Landlord took five years to replace ventilation system after 2010 fire spread smoke across 11 storeys

The landlord of Grenfell Tower took five years to replace a smoke ventilation system that the London fire brigade said had suffered “catastrophic failure” in a fire in 2010 that spread smoke across 11 storeys and injured three people, the inquiry into the disaster has heard.

The Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO) was told by the LFB that the system needed a full test after it failed causing injuries to residents, including Sayeda Ahmed who lived in flat 156. She received an admission of liability from the council landlord after she inhaled heavy smoke that had spread from the fire on the sixth-floor landing, the inquiry heard.

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Grenfell cladding makers did not reveal ‘disastrous’ fire test data

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Inquiry hears Arconic failed to share results with certifiers despite being ‘legally obliged’ to do so

The company that made the cladding panels used on Grenfell Tower did not tell certifiers about a “disastrous” failed fire test on one of its products despite being “legally obliged” to do so, the inquiry into the fire has heard.

Claude Schmidt, the president of Arconic’s French arm, denied the test results were “deliberately concealed”, but agreed the omission amounted to a “misleading half truth” during proceedings on Wednesday.

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Hotel quarantine – too little too late? Politics Weekly podcast

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Jessica Elgot and John Crace look at why the latest coronavirus travel restrictions might not work the way the government expects. Plus, Helen Davidson and Jon Henley on how the world sees the UK’s Covid response

In response to the myriad of new Covid-19 variants entering the UK, the health secretary, Matt Hancock, announced in the Commons on Tuesday that travellers arriving from coronavirus hotspots who refuse to adhere to the new restrictions could face £10,000 fines and jail sentences of up to 10 years. The move might seem extreme, but given how long we have known about variants cropping up since the new year, many are asking, is it too little too late?

The housing minister, Robert Jenrick, has announced billions of pounds in extra support to address the cladding crisis exposed after the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017. Will it be enough to help hundreds of thousands of people feel safe again in their own homes?

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What has the Grenfell inquiry revealed about building materials?

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Some firms had rigged fire safety tests for potentially dangerous products from as early as 2007

A new regulator that could prosecute companies making dangerous building materials has been announced by the government, prompted by evidence given at the Grenfell Tower inquiry. Here we look at some of the key issues that were raised by the hearing …

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‘Step up’ and face Grenfell inquiry, minister tells cladding firm bosses

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Stephen Greenhalgh said executives should not ‘hide behind’ rarely used French law

The UK government has demanded that executives who supplied combustible cladding to Grenfell Tower “step up to the plate” after their refusal to give evidence to the public inquiry into the disaster provoked anger among the bereaved and survivors.

On Sunday, Stephen Greenhalgh, the building safety minister, escalated a legal and diplomatic dispute over the position taken by three current and former executives at the French division of the US company Arconic. He told them to stop hiding behind an arcane French law.

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Director at Grenfell Tower TMO describes how fatal cladding saved £800,000

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Peter Maddison challenged at the inquiry over his ‘candour’ in relation to cost-cutting

A director at the landlord of Grenfell Tower has apologised for the “devastating” fire after he described his role overseeing hundreds of thousands of pounds in cost savings relating to combustible cladding installed on the council block.

Peter Maddison, director of assets and regeneration at the Kensington and Chelsea tenants management organisation (TMO), was close to tears at the end of his testimony to the public inquiry into the tragedy when he said sorry.

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Grenfell: inquiry hears council at heart of cost-cutting decisions

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RBKC used ‘decisive influence’ to remove original contractor over budget concerns

The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) used “decisive influence” to remove the original contractor on Grenfell Tower despite its claims to have delegated responsibility for the works, the public inquiry into the disaster has heard.

In evidence that places the Conservative-controlled council at the heart of a key decision in the run up to the June 2017 fire, the inquiry was told that Laura Johnson, RBKC’s director of housing, lost patience with Leadbitter when it said the project was going to cost £1.2m more than the budget.

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Grenfell families want inquiry to look at role of ‘race and class’ in tragedy

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Campaigners accuse Kensington council of ‘contemptuous disregard’ in decisions that led up to the fire

The Grenfell Tower fire inquiry must include a separate investigation into how “race and class” contributed to the tragedy, according to a group supporting more than a third of the deceased.

The organisation, which represents 28 of the 72 individuals who died in the fire, submitted a statement on 21 July to the inquiry chairman, judge Sir Martin Moore-Bick, to request that an extra module be added to the inquiry to examine if the cost-cutting measures that helped spread the fire would have been sanctioned “if the tower block was in an affluent part of the city for an affluent white population”. Currently there are eight modules, each covering a separate theme, in phase 2 of the inquiry which is examining why the fire happened.

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Grenfell project manager denies saying cladding ‘would not burn’

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Simon Lawrence tells inquiry he offered no such assurances about cladding material

The project manager on the Grenfell Tower refurbishment has denied assuring the block’s landlord its new cladding panels “would not burn at all”.

The public inquiry into the disaster that killed 72 people was shown a witness statement from David Gibson, head of capital investment at the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation, that claimed Simon Lawrence of Rydon said the plastic-filled panels were “inert”. In fact they were highly combustible and the inquiry has already deemed they were the primary cause of the fire’s spread.

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Grenfell Tower inquiry distancing rules anger the bereaved

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Hundreds of survivors and the bereaved will be unable to attend under distancing rules

Builders behind the disastrous Grenfell Tower refurbishment are finally set to face public questioning over the June 2017 fire that killed 72 people, as the delayed public inquiry resumes on Monday with strict social distancing rules that have angered the bereaved.

Hundreds of survivors, families and residents are among those who will be prohibited from attending the hearings, which will be conducted with only the inquiry panel, led by Sir Martin Moore-Bick, witnesses, their lawyers and cross-examining inquiry counsel present in the Paddington hearing room. Everyone else is being invited to follow proceedings online.

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Only fraction of £600m pot to fix Grenfell-style cladding spent so far

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MPs to launch investigation into delay, which has left 300 highrises yet to be remediated

The government has spent less than a quarter of what it promised to replace dangerous Grenfell-style cladding, leaving 300 highrise buildings still not fixed three years after the disaster.

Ministers pledged £400m in May 2018 to strip social housing towers of aluminium composite material (ACM) panels similar to those which spread the fire at Grenfell Tower in west London, killing 72 people in June 2017. But only £133m has been spent, a National Audit Office report found, leaving more than half of the 154 affected blocks still needing work.

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Charity supporting Grenfell victims accused of racism and bullying

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Tutu Foundation claims Westway Trust, which manages 23 acres in north Kensington, is ‘suppressing’ final version of critical report

A charity set up 50 years ago to compensate families living in the shadow of London’s A40 flyover has been branded “institutionally racist” and “unethical”, according to a leaked landmark report.

The Westway Trust, which manages the land under the flyover and works on a range of projects with the local people, appointed the respected Tutu Foundation to investigate persistent allegations of racism against the diverse community of north Kensington. Following the Grenfell fire, the charity provided support for victims, who today commemorate the third anniversary of the disaster in which 72 people died.

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Grenfell relative draws comparisons between fire and Covid-19 response

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Families of 72 victims of tower block blaze will mark third anniversary of blaze this weekend

A bereaved relative has drawn parallels between the coronavirus crisis and the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire before the third anniversary of the disaster.

Karim Mussilhy, whose uncle Hesham Rahman died in the blaze, said the pandemic had been tough for many of the bereaved and survivors of the fire, which killed 72 people.

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