Justice 4 Grenfell wishes to send our warmest thanks to the family of esteemed Social justice Journalist Phillip Wearne who died in March who have made a donation from his estate to the campaign. May he rest in eternal peace. Please read the article below to find out more about Phillip’s amazing life

It has been announced that the long awaited Grenfell Tower Inquiry will be published on the 30th of October 2019 – the day before Brexit.

A deliberate ploy resigning the value, importance, and national interest of the disaster to the bottom of the pile of continued disrespect and neglect.

We @J4G fully support the letter sent by Grenfell United to inquiry judge- Martin Moore-Bick, asking that:

1. The report is brought forward giving it the full public attention that it needs and deserves.
2. The bereaved and survivors and community will not be silenced or shut down by governmental tactics of cloaking and silence.
3. For the 72 known souls who perished at the hands of social indifference, neglect and malaise; that their voices must be heard and their story told.

Forever in our hearts.

Grenfell MediaWatch Update (Please watch the video)

Deeper Into The Long Grass

August 23rd 2019

When video footage of a group of people burning an effigy of Grenfell Tower, complete with brown and Muslim figures at windows and babies floating out of it became public, the bereaved and survivors and communities across the country were truly horrified- it was not just the mocking laughter that accompanied the burning of the effigy that shocked but the fact that this was considered an appropriate way to celebrate bonfire night.

Paul Bussetti was charged but surprisingly cleared on Thursday in the Magistrate’s court of distributing grossly offensive material.

The chief magistrate of England and Wales, Emma Arbuthnot described the handling of the case against Paul Bussetti as “appalling” after ‘new’ evidence was disclosed by the Crown Prosecution service (CPS) to the defence shortly before she was retiring to consider her verdict.

This is certainly a shocking and appalling situation. That a blatant racist act like this can be swept under the carpet in 2019 is a serious indictment and blight on our society. Some 20 years after the Lawrence Inquiry recognised the issue of ‘institutional racism’ and the Crown Prosecution Service introduced a racist and religious hate crime prosecution policy- a case like this should have secured a conviction. The CPS has recently gained a poor reputation for late or non-disclosure of evidence in cases – especially where the victim and witnesses are vulnerable and or traumatised. The impact can be seen as rendering the rule of law as useless if it fails to meet the needs of those who need the most protection. Who are prosecution policies meant to protect? At best, it seems to be protecting the very suspects it is meant to convict!!!

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9th August 2019

‘Nothing is in place to assess environmental and health risks.’

The Resignation of Prof Anna Stec from the Scientific Advisory Group (SAG) did not happen in a vacuum.   It is grounded in the SAG changing the remit and parameters of what they were assigned to do from the start. Anna specified in her resignation letter dated 24^thJuly. It states that, “The SAG was originally established to review potential land contamination and its effect in the vicinity of the Grenfell Tower and North Kensington, ranging from environmental analysis to public health.”  As an expert working with a group investigating the potential contamination from Grenfell Fire chemicals, Stec’s departure is an open chasm that all is not well with the ‘official’ response to possible contamination and toxicity.  In her resignation letter to Sir Patrick Vallance, (the government’s chief scientific adviser and chair of the SAG); Stec wrote,

 “There are still a significant number of people suffering physically and mentally following the Grenfell Tower fire, and yet, there is still nothing in place to properly evaluate all the adverse health effects of the fire, and specifically exposure to fire effluents.”

Stec also raised questions about the appropriate level of expertise that AECOM – the company appointed by the government to carry out the official tests of samples.  She was disappointed at the lack of expertise of combustion toxicology or fire effluent analysis of AECOM. She also disapproved of the selection of sampling locations.

The Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG) has also failed to reassure the community that all concerns raised by the community and Professor Anna Stec, have been addressed.  A recent meeting at a local Leisure centre failed to meet community expectations for a thorough and robust process of testing and feedback lacked any substantive findings. At times, some of the responses given were at best misleading and at worse did not reassure the community; a community that has to waited now for 25 month to get clear answers.

Coordination between the NHS, Public Heath England, Public and the Environment Agency appears poor. The local community is starting to feel that there is no agency that can provide then with the right answers to their questions or properly address worries and health risks to them and their children to rest.

Prof Stec, a witness in the Grenfell Fire Inquiry, conducted independent tests of land samples to verify contamination levels within a month of the west London fire on 14 June 2017. She found levels of cancer-causing chemicals were 160 times higher in the north Kensington area than normal. She noted,“Nothing is in place” to assess environmental and health risks. The authorities continued to tell us that the area was safe.  Yet the government has said its approach has been “rigorous”.  The Justice 4 Grenfell Campaign would say it is just ‘not rigorous enough.’

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Social inequality was the most serious threat to the democratic fabric of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea council (RBKC). It stood for years as the precondition for the preservation of the wealthy south of the borough.

Yesterday’s report by the Independent Grenfell Recovery Taskforce politely stated that ‘In many ways RBKC was a broken organisation in the autumn of 2017. It has repaired itself, and in some areas, it functions well. However, it is still some distance from being a high performing organisation that has the confidence of many of its residents in the north of the borough most affected by the tragedy. We hope to be proved wrong, but we are unconvinced that the current pace of change will achieve this in the foreseeable future. We are in agreement with most of this statement apart from any hope that they will be proved wrong.

At the administration committee on Monday evening, this preservation was seen in its ugliest form; embedded at the centre of a new borough constitution.

The horror of what happened at Grenfell tower continues to hang heavily over North Kensington. The above precondition has a hand in what happened there. The old leadership of the council ‘resigned’ and a ‘new’ leadership gave plaudits to themselves about how they had changed and how they relished future working the local community and had developed ‘new’ ears to listen and learn from us.

In reality, this should not have been something new. In a democratic society, all public institutions should reflect the diversity of those they serve; where this isn’t the case, good practice should enable all voices to be heard; effective community engagement is a dialogue not a monologue. It is about participation not domination; it’s about humanity, fairness, transparency, the list is not exhaustive.

The new proposed constitution was available on the council’s website 5 days before the meeting. The size of the document easily rivalled that of novel war and peace! The community was expected to digest and analyse it with in this time.  RBKC asserted that the constitution had gone out for consultation; where? On the website;  to whom? Resident Associations (RA) – three resident association representatives present at the meeting stated they had not been contacted. Could RBKC provide the list of RA’s that they had contacted – no definitive list was produced to evidence this. There had been a public meeting to consult – how many attended? Fifteen! Due to the small number of attendees no breakdown of their diversity was collated.

In August 2017, we met the then new CEO, Barry Quirk to the urgent need for quality community engagement and communication. One of the issues raised was the need for documents in particular complex documents to have plain English and to even consider getting a crystal mark for council documents. These have never materialised; further to this no Easy read documents are produced, crucial documents are not translated into community languages; there are no BSL signers present at council meetings. This gives a clearer picture of who they don’t want to consult, communicate or engage with.

The question that remains the elephant in the room is why are RBKC rushing this constitution change through. Well, at the heart of the proposed changes is their need to remove the Grenfell Recovery Scrutiny Committee. The committee set up in the aftermath of the Fire. Why we asked because the work that it does can be subsumed into four other committees – housing, adult and social care ………..

RBKC’s second response is that the GRSC is not effective. Why? They gave two reasons – one was the ‘community’ didn’t conduct itself in a manner that enabled ‘their’ business to be conducted. The second was more alarming – they wanted government ministers to attend the scrutiny committee to discuss Grenfell related issues, but alluded that were somewhat frightened to attend because we, yes we the residents posed some kind of threat! Unbelievable

We have asked for a deferral before adopting the new constitution – RBKC chose to ignore this and the Leadership meeting on the 24^thJuly 2019 will, no doubt, rubber stamp it.

We search the RBKC website for an equality impact assessment that should have been done alongside this huge constructional change. We cannot find it.

After the worst disaster since world war 2, RBKC was in a position to effect real change and listen to its residents, they had the opportunity to try new and innovative ways of consulting and engaging its diverse community, they could have become an exemplar model of how a Local authority can be run when you effectively work iin partnership. Rather than take the road less travelled, they are content and secure to continue business as usual. Shame on them.

The outstanding question is who is holding RBKC to account? Or to coin a latin phrase, Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who is guarding the guards, who is watching the watchers? Or will they be allowed to continue to widen the gap of social inequality in the borough.

They had year of practice.

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