Warning: this article contains details that you might find upsetting.
On Tuesday June 17th at the Customer Service desk of Kensington & Chelsea Council (RBKC) a desperate resident cut her own throat in a spectacular act of self-harm. The Council closed their customer services and emailed all staff to assure them that they were taking all appropriate action. Witnesses have since provided more context for the incident, claiming that the resident had been provoked into a state of frenzy by RBKC’s abusive treatment of her.
As reported by a local news website, ambulance crews, paramedics, an Incident Response Officer and a London Air Ambulance rushed to the scene where the female resident was treated before being transferred to a major trauma centre.
On Facebook and X, RBKC announced “a customer incident” and RBKC’s Chief Executive Officer Maxine Holdsworth emailed all Council employees to tell them that a resident had “seriously injured herself” and pledging support for all Customer Service staff along with “an incident review.”
Holdsworth told staff that “not all the facts are not (sic) yet known” and “further updates will be available as we have them.”
The Council CEO affirmed, “I know we will work together to continue providing services to residents that need us.”
Since June 17th, the only updated provided by RBKC has been to announce that the Customer Service desk had reopened, on June 18th.
What else do we know?
A member of staff at RBKC told Urban Dandy that the resident, a woman with a five-year-old son, had been placed in temporary housing by RBKC after being made homeless by a fire. The source told us the Council had handled her case “poorly,” allowing her to believe she and her son were on the verge of street homelessness when in fact her temporary accommodation stay had been extended.
On 17th June, according to our source, the woman had asked to speak to somebody who could help her. She became increasingly distressed and drew a knife, stabbing herself in the neck. Council Security Officers were immediately on the scene but pulled the knife out of the woman’s neck, causing a “bloodbath” with blood spraying out of her.
Our source confirmed the media report that paramedics arrived at the scene quickly. They told us that the woman was put into a medically induced coma to save her life and that Customer Service staff were still “distraught” weeks after the event.
On X, somebody claiming to be a ‘customer’ who witnessed events responded to RBKC’s announcement that their Customer Service desk was closed, blaming Council staff for the incident: “your desk staff caused that…the woman cut her throat from being so frustrated and spoken down to by the lady on the desk.”
They added “seemed like no one was first aid trained.”
We have minimal details of the woman’s personal situation and have not yet obtained an update on her current state of health, but we have a clear picture of how housing is administered by the Council thanks to years of hearing from residents and charity workers about how people are treated when trying to secure their most basic need, shelter.
We also know that the November cyber-attack on RBKC, which appears to have been avoidable, has impacted the Council’s ability to manage temporary accommodation as the IT systems RBKC uses to pay housing providers have been impacted, leading landlords to look to more reliable sources of income.
Regarding the cyber-attack and the Council’s backlog of housing complaints, Councillor Cem Kemahli, RBKC’s Lead Member for Housing, told Urban Dandy: “The criminal cyber attack did affect many services in the Council, but we maintained frontline services and core homelessness and temporary accommodation services continued to be delivered throughout. The backlog is less than 150 complaints. We are working our way through these at pace.”
Social Housing
RBKC’s management of social housing was already chaotic before the cyber-attack. Residents housed in temporary accommodation are required to attend the Town Hall in-person to extend their stays, often week-by-week. This means removing all their belongings from the accommodation in the morning and spending hours at the Town Hall before returning to the same accommodation, a situation that creates complications around work and other responsibilities.
Temporary stays must expire before they can be renewed, and the length of stays, while almost always short-term, seem to be arbitrarily decided, often with no explanation provided to the resident of why their stay has been allocated for one week or three weeks.
There are sometimes administrative conflicts within RBKC regarding which budget the temporary accommodation should be paid from. For example, Social Services and Housing Solutions might seek to divert a housing invoice to the other department, increasing residents’ stress and uncertainty further.
Support workers from local charities told Urban Dandy that there is no route into council housing except by complaining, leaving people’s fates at the mercy of the personality or mood of Council staff. Causing a scene at the open plan Customer Service Centre can get results, depending on the temperament of staff. While one person might get a good result by kicking off, another doing the same thing might be removed by the police if RBKC’s staff don’t want to deal with them.
The Council currently has around 3,000 people waiting to be offered a social housing tenancy. Average waiting time for a one-bed property is 3.5 years; for a two-bed it is 4.5 years and for a three-bed house it is six years. If a person is considered homeless, this puts them in priority band three, indicating moderate priority.
RBKC manages 6,930 council houses, the lowest stock of any inner London borough.
Grenfell Tower
The self-harm incident came just three days after the ninth anniversary of the Grenfell Tower fire, when 72 people were killed in an RBKC-managed block of flats. Since then the police have made no arrests of suspected perpetrators, while the government ordered the Tower to be brought down, without properly consulting residents. We do not know if the victim has any connection to Grenfell Tower. The tower is part of Lancaster West Estate and had been considered for demolition by RBKC as part of a plan to transform the demographics of the north of the borough. The local authority managed the estate via its so-called Tenant Management Organisation. In reality, this was an Arms-Length Management Organisation that undermined and denigrated residents who raised the alarm over abusive and unsafe practices.
Since Grenfell, RBKC has consistently vowed to “change.” One week after the horror at the Town Hall this June, Council Leader Elizabeth Campbell declared the number one priority for local residents to be ‘cleaner streets,’ reflecting a borough divided between those struggling to meet their most basic needs and those with no material problems at all.
Last Summer, the Social Housing Regulator gave RBKC a dismal C3 rating based on “serious failings in the landlord delivering the outcomes of the consumer standards and significant improvement is needed.”
A lack of secure, affordable housing plagues thousands of residents of the Grenfell borough. The average private rental cost in the borough is £3,341. North Kensington wards are mired in poverty, and there has been a denial of justice over the man-made, entirely preventable Grenfell fire. Parallel to this injustice, RBKC has never tired of saying that it is changing. But the Council has not yet created an organisational culture in which the most vulnerable among us are treated with humanity and respect as they seek to secure housing for their children.
Among RBKC’s 45 commitments following publication of the Grenfell Inquiry Report was Commitment Six, to “improve support for tenants, leaseholders and residents in temporary accommodation to make complaints.”
Since 2017, the Council has also run ‘co-design’ events, ostensibly to generate new improved service standards.
The disturbing incident of 17th June casts more doubt on RBKC’s claims to have changed since Grenfell; the inhumanity embedded in the Council’s culture appears to have again produced horrifying consequences.
by Tom Charles @tomhcharles
Cover image from The Chelsea Citizen
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