Corbyn: failure to rehouse Grenfell Tower survivors a disgrace

The failure to rehouse most of the Grenfell Tower fire survivors after six months is disgraceful, Jeremy Corbyn has said as a prominent Labour MP accused the council of treating affected people as consumers.

In a statement released on Monday, as the inquiry into the disaster was due to open for two days of hearings, the Labour leader said: “It is a disgrace that the majority of Grenfell residents have still not been given homes and that tower blocks across our country have still not been made safe. We need answers from the government and we need action.

“Grenfell was an entirely avoidable human disaster. The government must act now to prevent it from being repeated.”

The Labour MP for Tottenham, David Lammy, who lost a friend in the fire, said politicians at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea council were struggling to win back the trust of survivors because they were treating their dealings with them as transactions.

“There’s something about the language that feels transactional, that feels like the local people are consumers. They’re citizens, they’re taxpayers, they’re caught up in tremendous grief,” he said.

Asked what the council should do to gain the trust of former Grenfell residents, many of whom are still in temporary accommodation, Lammy told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “There’s something about authentic leadership, about who are the leaders, how they relate to the people in front of them. And, I have to say, in all my years of public service, there’s something about the civic that has been lost here.

“It’s just been completely lost, that great civic possibility in Britain that created huge town halls that represented people genuinely does not feel present here in this local authority as it relates to the citizens that pay their taxes and want that representation.”

He said council leaders, who have come under heavy and sustained criticism for their response to the fire, were trying, but they were “not bridging the gulf” between themselves and the survivors.

In the immediate aftermath of the fire, which killed 71 people, the prime minister, Theresa May, promised that all survivors would be found a home nearby within three weeks. Last week, Grenfell United – which supports survivors – said 80% of the families made homeless in June were still looking for somewhere to live.

The housing minister Alok Sharma said recently that it would take the council up to 12 months to rehouse families.

The leader of Kensington and Chelsea council, Elizabeth Campbell, told Today that the organisation expected to have bought 300 homes by Christmas and that when families are ready to move “we will be ready for them”.

Campbell defended the council’s actions, saying it had taken on an “army of people” that was “working 24 hours a day, seven days a week because we actually really do care, we do want to get people rehoused”.

She said: “We have been buying homes in this part of London at a rate of about two a day. We will have 300 homes very shortly so everyone will have a choice, and then I guess it’s about relationships.

“It’s about individual-by-individual, family-by-family, figuring out what they want and trying to get them into a position where they feel ready to accept and ready to move on.”

She acknowledged, however, that there was a lack of trust in the council among survivors and said it was perfectly understandable that some had refused initial offers of accommodation because they thought it would push them down the list of people trying to find a permanent home.