Facebook.com/mylondonnews Grenfell Tower management firm ‘like a mini Mafia’
FIRE SURVIVOR CLAIMED IN 2016 THAT ONLY A CATASTROPHE ‘WOULD EXPOSE THEIR INEPTITUDE’
A SURVIVOR of the Grenfell Tower fire, who raised many concerns about safety at the building in a blog which proved to be prophetic, said the arms-length management company was “like a mini Mafia”.
Edward Daffarn, who co-authored the Grenfell Action Group blog, told the Grenfell Inquiry that he thought Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (TMO) – which looked after 9,000 properties for the council – did not care for residents.
In October 2016, a blog he wrote with North Kensington resident Francis O’ Connor warned: “It is a truly terrifying thought but the Grenfell Action Group firmly believe that only a catastrophic event will expose the ineptitude and incompetence of our landlord, the KCTMO, and bring an end to the dangerous living conditions and neglect of health and safety legislation that they inflict upon their tenants and leaseholders.”
Discussing posts in the blog during a day’s evidence at the Grenfell Inquiry, he said: “When I described the TMO as like a ‘mini Mafia’, a nonfunctioning organisation, they’re not glib, you know, shoot from the hip expressions, I spent a long time trying to describe this organisation.”
Giving evidence, Mr Daffarn, who is a social worker, said: “I’m immensely proud of what we did with the GAG blog. That’s really important. It’s not dealing with memories.”
He moved into the tower in 2001 and had served on the Lancaster West Estate Management Board, but increasingly became with it.
Together with other residents he set up a Grenfell Compact and the Grenfell Action Group to deal with concerns about conditions in Grenfell Tower and the Lancaster West estate.
He said he had lobbied Kensington and Chelsea Council to invest in the North Kensington estate as it was spending millions on a new secondary school and leisure centre close by.
“It felt perverse that they were spending 80 odd million pounds of a project on our doorstep and yet our estate was being run down into a slum-like condition,” said Mr Daffarn, who lived on the 16th floor of Grenfell.
The Inquiry heard how Mr Dafdisillusioned farn repeatedly raised his worries about how the fire brigade would reach the 24-storey tower block when a car park on the single road leading to the tower was shut because of building works at the nearby Kensington Aldridge Academy and Leisure Centre.
He said people were parking in bays for the emergency services and the TMO was not policing it.
“It was never sorted because even on the night of the fire there were vehicles parked under the tower,” he said.
“I had always thought about a gas explosion, something quite catastrophic happening, and having to get people out very quickly.”
He was also concerned about the stay-put policy at Grenfell and had asked where people should gather in an emergency as open space had been used in the nearby building project. Mr Daffarn said once refurbishment works got under way on the Tower “the closure of the ground floor had turned Grenfell Tower into a fire trap”.
People could either use a ramp from the Latimer Road tube or go down a single staircase and through the nearby walkway to get in and out of the tower. He told the Inquiry he never saw samples of the cladding which would ultimately prove so fatal and is the major reason why the June 2017 fire spread so rapidly, claiming the lives of 72 people.
In December 2015, the TMO’s head of assets, Peter Maddison, described him and ward councillor Judith Blakeman as “a negative force at Grenfell at present”.
In an email, he wrote: “People are going to them with their concerns and not us.”
Mr Daffarn said there were six or seven residents from the tower in the Grenfell Compact representing their concerns.
He told the Grenfell Inquiry: “It’s a very self-serving, non-functioning organisation, the TMO. The TMO were a non resident-focussed organisation. I don’t think they really cared about their residents at all.
“They did as little as they possibly could for their residents and many, many residents would complain and not get their complaint addressed and think complaining to the TMO doesn’t make any difference.
“They would think ‘I’ll fix this repair myself ’ or ‘put up with a bit of damp in my kitchen’ and just get on with their lives.”
In January 2016 he spoke at Kensington and Chelsea Council’s housing scrutiny committee after a residents’ petition called for an independent investigation into the TMO.
But he said the outcome was: “The TMO ended up marking their own homework…we might not have been sitting here if someone independent had come and looked at what was going on.”
At the end of his evidence he was asked to sum up what the TMO and RBKC did not do. After a long pause, he said: “They didn’t treat us with respect, humanity or empathy.
“If they had done we wouldn’t be sitting here now. The culture of the KCTMO, the lack of scrutiny by RBKC I believe and many residents believe is a causative factor of what happened on the night of the fire and what led to the fire and I would ask you to bear that in mind.”