Grenfell - a victim of official policies

We'd only previously seen sights like this in disaster movies, not in our capital city 

When I got up on 14th June 2017, I was as usual listening to Radio 4 and heard a mention of a tower block fire in West London. As ordinary fires don't usually make the national news, I thought this must of a different order; switching on the BBC TV News channel, I was shocked to see the unfolding of the Grenfell disaster which claimed the lives of 72 people who could reasonably have expected to be safe in their own homes. It's not an exaggeration to say that I spent most of that day watching the news in horror and disbelief.

In the aftermath, politicians and civic leaders said all the right things and various pledges were made by the Tory government of Theresa May. Sympathy was expressed, promises of a full investigation were made and the standard, but almost meaningless, pledge that lessons would be learnt was trotted out.

Regrettably, once the immediate shock had died down and the attention of the news media had moved onto other issues, the official response slipped into a lower gear and now, more than three and a half years later, hundreds of thousands of people are still living in unsafe homes. Patrols were introduced in buildings with unsafe cladding to give advance warning of fires breaking out, and the government asserts that this has cost leaseholders on average £137 per month, although one woman in Bromley told the BBC they'd cost her more than £300 a month - £11,700 so far over the last three years - which she can't afford to pay much longer.

Another effect on leaseholders has been that their flats have become unsellable, which is a major problem for those who want to move out - unsurprisingly, under the circumstances - and those who need to move, perhaps for employment or family reasons. This must be a major blight on their lives.

However, a vital concern is the continuing danger. The government has announced a new £30 million fund "to fund fire alarms for private and social sector buildings over 18 metres with unsafe cladding and with a Waking Watch", but what they haven't said, but which is nonetheless essential, is that this can only be a stop-gap measure prior to the total removal of all dangerous cladding.

A Labour proposal will, if passed, force the government to establish the extent of the cladding scandal and ensure that those responsible pay for rectifying it, not the leaseholders, and a number of frustrated Tories have declared that they intend to support it.

How did an advanced country with a stable, long-established system of government end up in the situation that contractors could with impunity use materials that some of them have admitted they knew were unsafe?

I blame "the bonfire of the regulations", a particularly telling phrase in this context. I can recall that Tory governments ever since the time of Thatcher were reluctant to introduce any new regulations on the grounds that they - allegedly - stifled business, initiative and innovation. There was a requirement on any minister who introduced a new regulation to find two to abolish.

I believe this created a culture of disdain for regulations in general that empowered some companies and contractors to cut costs by circumventing them. After all, if the government views them as obstacles, why should anyone else take them seriously? Consequently, lip service was paid to them and false claims were made about the safety of construction materials based on rigged tests. This much has become apparent during the course of the Grenfell enquiry.

I'd like to hope that the folly of indiscriminately scrapping regulations and rubbishing those that remain would, after such a horrendous disaster, be consigned to the past as a criminal lapse of judgement. The routine response about learning lessons is nothing less than an insult to those who died, were injured or were rendered homeless having lost all their possessions - unless it is followed by decisive action. So far, what we have seen is far too little, far too late.

If there were a scintilla of real humanity and empathy among those charged with dealing with the aftermath of this tragedy, I'd expect them to be hanging their heads in shame at the complete inadequacy to date of the official response at every level. Contrast the £30 million fund with the billions that have been squandered during the pandemic giving contracts to government cronies for work they have proved wholly incapable of carrying out and you will understand how utterly shameless and pathologically uncaring this shower that we call a government really is.

Neville Grundy
ARMS Mersey