Grenfell manager ‘ binned notebooks’

A PROJECT manager on the Grenfell Tower refurbishment has admitted “binning” her notebooks relating to the revamp despite knowing a public inquiry and police investigation were under way.

Claire Williams, who worked for Grenfell landlords the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation ( TMO), said she got rid of her records when she cleared her desk and left her job almost a year after the fire. She was questioned after it emerged that her former colleague, Peter Maddison, disclosed notebooks containing “material of the utmost relevance” to the inquiry only at the end of last week.

Ms Williams told the inquiry yesterday: “I left the TMO in May 2018 and I binned all of them but the last one, and Kennedys ( the TMO’s solicitors) have possession of the last one which covered probably 2017 and 2018.”

She said she may have thrown out “two or three notebooks” containing records dating back to 2013 when she joined the TMO, which ran Grenfell Tower, adding: “If the police didn’t take them, I binned them.”

Chairman Sir Martin MooreBick asked: “You binned them even though you knew, by that time, there was already on foot a public inquiry?”

Ms Williams replied: “Everything that was in there I would have thought is actually documented elsewhere. I think I just tidied up the desk. I would have looked at them and thought ‘ There’s nothing here that isn’t in formal evidence’, and so I got rid of them.”

Grenfell United, a group representing bereaved families and survivors, said in a statement: “We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, the indifference these people have shown us and our loved ones never fails to shock and enrage.

“That they didn’t care enough to hand over anything and everything that could lead to the truth of what happened to our loved ones is devastating. What else is being hidden?

“We want to know why the police didn’t discover these notebooks before and whether they will investigate the potentially criminal admission of destroying evidence.”