One year on from the Grenfell fire

It is scandalous that politicians are whittling down public housing budgets and failing to take action to keep residents safe.

Letter, June 13th 2018:

A year ago we witnessed Britain’s deadliest fire in living memory. The morning after, we learned that warnings about fire safety from residents had been ignored. Later we heard about the safety failures at national and local level, and companies hawking unsafe building materials unchecked.

After Grenfell, many argued that the atrocity should signal a turning point in housing policy. We have yet to see this turning point. We hear that cladding like that used at Grenfell will not be banned. Indeed, it took 11 months for Theresa May to commit £400m to remove existing cladding from tower blocks. Even this modest and long overdue announcement was revealed as a sham: the £400m was to be pinched from affordable housing budgets. It is scandalous that a year on from this tragedy, politicians are whittling down public housing budgets and failing to take action to keep residents safe.

This political disregard for social tenants is rooted in state disinvestment from public housing, and unaccountable private interests taking over the building and management of social housing. Our estates are being run down and demolished while public assets are sold off. Meanwhile 80% of new homes built in London are affordable only to the richest 8% of the city.

The mayor of London is to enforce ballots on some estates facing “regeneration”. This is a start – but we need political will at all levels to ensure that development benefits tenants first, and that what gets built locally meets local needs.

A tragedy like Grenfell must never happen again. We need public investment in safe, decent public housing that is affordable for everyone. We want a housing system where tenants are listened to. And we need housing policy driven by public interest, not by the market.

Katya Nasim, Radical Housing Network

Dr Faiza Shaheen, Director of CLASS

Doug Thorpe, Stop HDV Campaign

Emma Dent Coad, Labour MP for Kensington

Sian Berry, Green party London assembly member

Piers and Tanya Thompson, Save Our Silchester

Richard Chute, Chair, Earls Court Tenants’ Association

Joe Beswick, Head of Housing and Land, New Economics Foundation

Eileen Short, Chair, Defend Council Housing

Pilgrim Tucker, Community Organiser

Dawn Foster, Journalist

Cllr Jonathan Bartley, Co-leader, Green party

Jean Lambert, Green party MEP for London

Susan Pashkoff, Chair, East London Unite Community

Martin Goodsell, Secretary, East London Unite Community

Rachael Hookaway, GMB Young London

Danny Dorling, Author of All that is Solid: The Great Housing Disaster, University of Oxford

Anna Minton, Author of Big Capital: Who is London for?, Reader in Architecture, University of East London

Dr David Madden, Author of In Defense of Housing: The Politics of Crisis, London School of Economics

Samir Jeraj, Author of The Rent Trap

Dr Sally Zlotowitz, Clinical and community psychologist, Housing and Mental Health Network

Sabtir Singh, Chief executive, Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants

Sahaya Guthrie, Stop the Elephant Development

Danielle Gregory and Hannan Majid, Ledbury Action Group

Pauline Wamunyu, Save Reginald House and Tidemill

Jacqueline Utley Achilles, Stop and Listen Campaign

Lucy Butler, Deptford People Project

Heather Gilmore, No Social Cleansing in Lewisham

Luciana Duailibe, Chair, Co-oPepys Community Arts Project

Bill Perry, Lambeth Housing Activists

Potent Whisper, Our Brixton

Amina Gichinga, London Renters Union

Anne Cooper, Save Cressingham Campaign

Andy Thornes, Crossfields Residents Association Secretary

Anuj Vats Citiscape, Residents Association

Aysen Dennis, Fight 4 Aylesbury

Simon Hannah and Ruth Cashman, Joint branch secretaries, Lambeth Unison

Sonia Mckenzie, Chair of the Fred Wigg and John Walsh Towers Tenants and Residents Association

Terry Harper, Millbank Residents Association

Uzoamaka Okafor, Chair, Myatts Field North Residents Association and PFI Monitoring Board

Dr Vickie Cooper, Open University

Dr Debbie Humphry, Kingston University

Dr Stuart Hodkinson, University of Leeds

Dr Nicholas Falk, Urbed Trust

Michael Edwards, Hon professor, UCL (Bartlett School of Planning)

Ben Beach, Concrete Action

John Hamilton, Lewisham People Before Profit

Heather Kennedy, Digs (Hackney Renters)

Sophie Morley, Architecture Sans Frontières UK

Tom Wilkinson, Architectural Review

Hannah Sheerin, President, Cambridge University Architecture Society

Liza Fior, MUF architecture/art

Douglas Murphy, Writer, RCA/CSM

Elizabeth Wilbraham, Workers Inquiry: Architecture (Architectural Workers Union)

Charlotte Grace, Novara Media

Andrea Luka Zimmerman and David Roberts, Film directors of The Estate We’re In

Paul Sng, Film director of Dispossession

PDF and Guardian Newspaper Link

Grenfell Tower, North Kensington 2017/2018