Ross Clark

issue. In 2012 the Audit Commission reported on the problem of illegally sublet council homes in Britain. It concluded that between four and six per cent of council homes in London were being sublet by their official tenants.

In one case the named tenant was living in Dubai while subletting his London flat for a profit. In another case a couple had moved out of their council property into a £3.5million home which they had inherited. Yet rather than giving up their tenancy as they should have done, they were renting out the property for a profit.

Many of these properties are dangerously overcrowded. On the Hyde Park Estate, a couple of miles from Grenfell Tower, there have been reports of six or seven people occupying a single one-bedroom flat.

It isn’t just social housing, either. Newham Council found 26 people crammed into one modest three-bedroom house.

Those who died at Grenfell Tower appear to have been victims of bungled renovation work which left the flats in a lethal condition. How a small fridge fire was allowed to engulf an entire block of flats must be the focus of the public inquiry that Theresa May has already ordered.

But we also need to look at how housing is being used. Neither this Government nor the coalition, nor Labour governments that preceded them, have grappled with the problem of people living illegally in overcrowded and insanitary conditions.

The Grenfell Tower disaster might not have been caused by overcrowding but unless we investigate properly the living conditions there, then sooner or later we are going to have similar tragedies caused by having people crammed into unsuitable housing. In the long run it is best for everybody if the authorities seek to address this question now.

As well as illegally sublet council and housing association property, there are believed to be 10,000 illegal sheds and outbuildings used as housing across Britain. When Southall Council raided just seven of them in 2013 officials found 10 occupants in each.

It shouldn’t come as any surprise that people are living in such conditions. There simply isn’t enough decent housing in the country to cope with a rapidly growing population.

WE KEEP being presented with figures purporting to show that migrants are of net benefit to the economy. But they don’t include the cost of the social housing that would have to be built – yet which isn’t being built – to ensure everyone has a safe and sanitary home.

And no, contrary to what Jeremy Corbyn seems to think, the problem cannot be solved by seizing homes owned by wealthy people. True, Kensington and Chelsea, in which the remains of Grenfell Tower stand, has a surprising number of empty properties. But that includes homes being renovated and homes temporarily vacant while they are sold or are awaiting tenants.

The Grenfell Tower tragedy has shown us that council housing, which is supposed to be highly regulated, is not necessarily safe.

But how much more dangerous are London’s new slums of overcrowded property? We can only hope it doesn’t take another tragedy to make the full extent of the problem known.

‘Dangerous to ignore possible overcrowding’