Significant failings in preparations to deal with a major disaster have been identified in a report on the response to the Grenfell Tower fire.
The concerns are highlighted in a review produced by Hammersmith and Fulham council (H&F), a neighbouring borough to the royal borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) and one of the first authorities to get involved in the immediate disaster response.
The council is supporting about 50 Grenfell families who remain in accommodation in hotels in Hammersmith and Fulham, and is providing dozens of social workers to support them. Many H&F officials were seconded to RBKC after the fire.
Concerns include RBKC’s initial response to the disaster. The report states: “The main issue facing H&F at a strategic and operational level was the lack of interaction with RBKC; the chief executive made three calls to the RBKC chief executive offering assistance on the day of the fire. The H&F emergency response team provided assistance despite the lack of any formal request to do so.” The report states that a more joined-up response from different councils is required in the event of a future disaster.
The report also highlights a systemic lack of preparedness on a London-wide and national scale to deal with a disaster of such magnitude.
“Under London’s local authority Gold arrangements, any borough can request mutual aid when facing an emergency incident, but there is a process to go through. A request has to go to the London Resilience Group (LRG) and be signed off by London Local Authority Gold. We anticipate this will be a key area of interest for the public inquiry. Either the London Resilience Group was not sufficiently coordinated or RBKC did not request the support at an early enough stage.”
The aim of the review was to identify shortcomings in the Grenfell response and how preparations for a future crisis could be improved.
“The scale of the disaster was such that a regional and national emergency response should have been invoked much sooner. Central government guidelines need to be revised to address this learning,” the report states.
It highlights a range of concerns in the immediate aftermath of the fire. These include:
- The council was not formally notified that Grenfell survivors were being accommodated in the borough and found out through the West Kensington Tenants and Residents Association. Council officials then had to obtain further information about survivors from hotel managers.
- The Grenfell rest centre was “quite chaotic”. According to the report, staff felt there needed to be more information about who was in charge. There was a lack of coordination between rest centres. There were five open at one point but only one formal rest centre in place. The instant community response in opening unofficial rest centres can lead to a loss of coordination.
- There was a lack of a clear policy at that stage from RBKC about the impact the acceptance of an offer of accommodation in H&F might have on the tenants’ rights to be rehoused permanently in RBKC. Some evacuees refused offers of temporary accommodation from H&F because of fears it would mean losing their entitlement to be rehoused in RBKC.
- Lack of knowledge of what the London resilience team can offer. The Local Authority Panel is developing service-level agreements to provide London with consistent and effective resilience in the future.
- The response from the LRG was to allocate social workers to work with the survivors and evacuees initially for two weeks. This led to constant changes of key workers for the Grenfell victims, which is not helpful in building supportive relationships.
“There needs to be more national response planning for this type of incident,” the report states, in the same way planning is done for terrorist incidents.
New guidelines should be produced centrally. London councils should review the role, functions, structures and procedures of the LRG.
The council has produced a Fire Safety Plus programme and says that a variety of measures to improve fire safety should be considered, including an approved code of practice for fire safety management for landlords and an examination of how effective sprinklers are compared with other measures. The report asks if a national regulatory body is needed for fire risk assessment, similar to that in place for the gas safety industry.
It flags the vital role played by social media in communicating information in the aftermath of the fire and says it could be used even more than it was post-Grenfell as a communication tool in a future disaster.
The leader of Hammersmith and Fulham council, Steve Cowan, said: “We conducted this review because of our close involvement with this tragedy. We offered help immediately at our own expense because it was the right thing to do. There are many lessons to be learned, which this report identifies. We can see that the government needs to make further investment in social housing to make it safe for everyone.”
