We continue to track Kensington & Chelsea Council’s performance since the Grenfell Tower fire, along with overlapping patterns, nationally and internationally. Sit back, get uncomfortable, this is an article that doesn’t end well.

Anniversary

A script writer couldn’t have produced a better allegory. While thousands of us gathered near Grenfell Tower on June 14^th in remembrance of those lost seven years earlier, half a mile away, the usually private resident gardens of Norland Square were opened to the paying public for a Shakespeare production.

With sponsorship from a Notting Hill estate agent listing sale properties at an average of £2.6 million, and rentals at an average of £15,600 a month, the show and its message contrasted with the Grenfell anniversary gathering, which might as well have been in Palestine to the wealthy of Norland Square who were told: “Bring your picnic, wine, sunglasses, pac-a-mac and participatory spirit and let’s make a fairytale wish: All’s Well That Ends Well!”

But all’s not well in Kensington where a delusional council trashes its own post-fire policies. And a new MP is sworn in as part of a Labour landslide, but the government’s austerity policies and acceptance of US-Israeli genocide leaves increasing numbers of people bereft and disenfranchised.

Local Politics

Events at Kensington Town Hall are only understandable in the context of the permanent and overwhelming Conservative majority in Britain’s most unequal borough, where Tory councillors are rarely faced with a struggle to pass legislation.

Thanks to the general election being called, purdah kicked in and Kensington & Chelsea Council (RBKC) was able to avoid its June Full Council Meeting. The council then used its July 24^th Full Council Meeting – the occasion of the decisive vote on the New Local Plan – to welcome a group young people to the Town Hall for their annual chance to add their participatory spirit to proceedings.

Choosing this date for the youths’ visit meant the exclusion of adults who might have challenged aspects of the Local Plan, specifically the huge development slated for North Kensington’s Kensal Gas Works site.

The youths challenged the council more generally, and ferociously. Conservative councillors could only respond with contradiction, cognitive dissonance and platitudes. You can watch the meeting in full here.

On 56 mins, during the young people’s section, when challenged over the Grenfell fire, Lead Member for Housing Cllr McVeigh apologised for the deaths of 18 children, stating “We are trying to do better and we’ve still got a long way to go.”

A young person then asked councillors: “Why should we believe you’ve changed?”

Cllr Benton (Labour) responded that there had been “no substantive change…in how the council treats its residents…if you push back against it (the idea that they have changed) ‘you’re too stupid to understand it.’”

Another young person told the chamber to stand for 18 seconds of silence, one for each of the children killed in the entirely avoidable fire.

After a video testimony from Grenfell bereaved was played, RBKC Leader Cllr Campbell responded for the Conservative group, saying the video had “touched our souls and it will continue to drive change at the council.”

These words were characteristic of seven years of empty rhetoric from Cllr Campbell. She soon proved this by admitting the scale of RBKC’s failure: “Many people rightly feel that we haven’t changed enough.”

The RBKC leader then listed specific fire safety improvements made to specific buildings since the end of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry Phase 1 and then insulted the young people’s intelligence by declaring “when we say we will do something, we mean it.”

Labour

By the time Leader of the Labour Group, Cllr Kasim Ali, delivered the opposition’s response, the young people had departed, leaving democracy to the (s)elected councillors and the discussion moved on to the Local Plan (from 1h 40 mins in the video).

Speaking for the opposition, Cllr Lari (Labour) described RBKC’s “cavalier attitude towards its own policies” since 2017. This was a rare public mention for the lesser-spotted Charter for Public Participation, the council’s own post-fire policy which accompanied much PR talk about “change” in 2018.

Cllr Lari stated that the Gas Works development contains the “threat of a skyscraper corridor” in North Kensington and described it as a “disgrace” that the New Local Plan was being rushed through just weeks before publication of the Grenfell Inquiry Phase 2 Report on September 4th which will surely have implications on what should/shouldn’t be in the Plan.

In his fact-based five minute excoriation of RBKC, Cllr Lari brought together several important issues for residents, concluding his remarks with a call for a delay to passage of the Local Plan. Cllr Tom Bennett (Conservative) spoke next, mocking Lari for packing in so much detail before waffling lazily for a few minutes about RBKC’s “good direction of travel.”  

New Local Plan

The Government Inspector’s report on RBKC’s New Local Plan starts with two important statements, which constitute the “main modifications” required from the council:

• RBKC’s plan should be informed by its Charter for Public Participation. RBKC had tried to avoid this by claiming that other legal obligations, which it had adhered to, superseded the 12 Principles of Good Governance (the main feature of the Charter) but the Inspector flatly rejected this notion.
• The New Local Plan doesn’t show adherence to trauma-informed practice and it needs to.

Despite these two major failures being identified by the Inspector and Labour’s call to delay approval of the New Local Plan until after the publication of the Inquiry Report on September 4^th, RBKC’s Conservative councillors took advantage of their numerical dominance, voting to adopt the Plan. 

The guaranteed Conservative majority at Kensington Council reflects local elections that are little more than candidate selections. It seems that all’s well that ends well for the Tory council. At least until publication of the Inquiry Report, which might shine a spotlight on the true nature of RBKC and expose the wholly inadequate responses they gave to the young people in in July:

We are trying to do better, and we’ve still got a long way to go – Cllr Sof McVeigh

Many people rightly feel that we haven’t changed enough – Cllr Elizabeth Campbell, Council Leader

 

by Tom Charles @urbandandyldn

this article was edited and divided into two on 22nd August, #2 will be published separately.