Grenfell Councillors Visited – 5 and a half months after the horrible hearth at Grenfell tower the native council accountable appeared nonetheless to be doing little to rehouse these displaced and there had been no prison expenses introduced. A small group of native residents and supporters from the Revolutionary Communist Group took to the streets of North Kensington to try to name on councillors and ask questions. In fact six years later they’re nonetheless ready for justice – and it appears unlikely ever to occur. The British institution has lengthy practised methods of taking care of its personal.
Protesters go to Grenfell councillors – North Kensington
The group gathered at Latimer Highway station within the early night the place they held a brief rally. They then set off to march to the addresses of a number of councillors within the space, although a lot of the council come from the wealthier finish of the borough fairly than North Kensington.
I might have instructed them (and possibly did) that they had been losing their time on the first tackle, that of Councillor Rock Feilding-Mellen, former deputy chief of Kensington Council and their cupboard member for housing answerable for the set up of the harmful cladding which precipitated the hearth to unfold disastrously. He had urged the consultants in 2014 to chop the price of the cladding resulting in the protected zinc cladding specified being changed with flammable panels – and he solely frightened about whether or not they had been the suitable color. These making them had been labelled as troublemakers (and worse.)
Different councillors had been additionally concerned in numerous choices and lack of motion, together with deciding in opposition to an inspection of fireplace doorways in properties within the borough that the London Hearth Brigade had made a number of months earlier than the hearth.
Seven main complaints made about security by residents to by way of the Grenfell Motion Group had been detailed in proof to the Grenfell inquiry; these had been merely dismissed by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea officers and councillors and particularly by the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Administration Organisation (KCTMO) accountable below the council for the administration of Grenfell and different properties within the borough.
Feilding-Mellen, elected as a councillor in 2010 was made Deputy Chief of Kensington & Chelsea Council (RBKC) and Cupboard Member for Housing, Property and Regeneration in 2013 with no apparent qualification or expertise for both place and started a marketing campaign of social cleaning, to, in his phrases, “wean folks off” residing in social housing within the borough.
He minimize the council’s housing ready record in half, eliminated the suitable of residents pressured out of the borough in redevelopment schemes to return and started an aggressive marketing campaign of eradicating social property from North Kensington. Each North Kensington Library and Westway Info centre had been bought at bargain to Notting Hill Prep Faculty and the Isaac Newton Centre to Chepstow Home Prep Faculty.
Each Feilding-Mellen and council chief Nicholas Paget-Brown had been pressured to resign from their posts weeks after the hearth, although each remained councillors. Feilding-Mellen moved out of his home not removed from Grenfell Tower on the finish of June, claiming there had been threats in opposition to him and vandalism. He was thought to have retreated to the safer climes of Chelsea Harbour, although his rich household have fairly a number of properties across the nation and likely overseas. Feilding-Mellen’s proof to the inquiry sickened many because it appeared vastly involved with getting free publicity for his enterprise pursuits in psychoactive substances, which incorporates providing supervised, authorized psilocybin retreats in Jamaica and The Netherlands.
The protesters had been extra profitable of their go to to councillor David Lindsay, a regionally born Conservative councillor who is claimed to be genuinely neighborhood minded and revered in North Kensington and was elected as Mayor of Kensington and Chelsea for 2022-23. He got here out from his residence and talked with them, explaining he had no reference to housing earlier than the hearth and had gone right down to Grenfell at 4am on the morning of the hearth to open up a centre for these affected. He instructed them that the council had been making an attempt laborious to seek out appropriate accomodation for the survivors and had spent appreciable sums in doing so. The native residents instructed him they felt the council had been and nonetheless was failing in its duties and weren’t glad together with his solutions.
Lastly I went with them a way additional south into to fairly wealthier areas, stopping outdoors the home of a 3rd councillor in Portland Highway. In the event that they had been residence they had been in hiding, however a neighbour got here out to to complain that the protesters had been waking his kids up, and saying that they shouldn’t protest right here and shouldn’t protest at evening, however ought to achieve this within the daytime when nobody could be at residence and affected by it. He was met with some very offended and fairly impolite responses – and the protest continued fairly longer and rather more noisily that it could in any other case have finished.
The group then rotated to make its manner again in direction of Grenfell Tower, however I left them. The Royal Borough doesn’t appear to spend an ideal deal on road lighting and the batteries in my LED gentle had been failing. I’d taken sufficient images and I used to be chilly and drained and wanted to eat and get residence to work on the images.
Extra footage at Protesters go to Grenfell councillors.
Tags: cladding, value reducing, councillors, David Lindsay, Feilding-Mellen, flammable cladding, Grenfell, Grenfell Tower, KCTMO, Kensington and Chelsea, Latimer Highway, London, march, Nicholas Paget-Brown, Nort Kensington, North Kensington, peter Marshall, Portland Highway., protest, psilocybin retreats, psychoactive substances, redevelopment, regeneration, Rock Feilding-Mellen, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, promoting social property, social cleaning, Tenant Administration Organisation
You may go away a response, or trackback from your personal website.
