Blaze expenses cost council more than £6m

HOTEL bills and expenses resulting from the Grenfell Tower fire have so far cost the council more than £6.3m, new figures reveal.

The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) has paid out more than £4.2m on emergency accommodation for hundreds of survivors since June 14, data obtained by the Press Association shows.

The majority of those left destitute by the deadly blaze remain in hotels 10 weeks later.

Emma Dent Coad, MP for the area, said a huge human and financial toll was being paid for the “small” savings made by RBKC during a recent refurbishment of Grenfell Tower.

Figures acquired under the Freedom of Information Act show that the council spent £4,259,172 on rooms in 49 hotels between the night of the fire and August 21.

Other costs include £98,730 on payments to survivors to cover their basic needs, £15,034 on travel and £415,084 on site work at the gutted tower.

RBKC said the Government had helped it to meet the financial demands of responding to the crisis.

But Labour’s Ms Dent Coad said the sum could have instead been used to buy houses for survivors.

With the price tag of the disaster’s aftermath almost double the amount spent on Grenfell Tower’s doomed cladding system, she urged the council to “rethink” its priorities.

She said: “First off we have to say that the survivors and evacuees have had such a terrible time we shouldn’t be counting the cost of that – that must be the first thing.

“But secondly, the council for many years has been involved in ‘spend to save’ exercises, which has always gone wrong. This looks more like ‘save to spend’.

“The small amount that they saved on the cladding system, if indeed they did, has cost lives and so far nearly £7m and it will cost a lot more.

“I think we need to rethink our priorities and put people first always. For £4m, we could have bought people homes off the market, surely.”

At least 80 people died when the council-owned building was destroyed by the inferno, its spread thought to have been accelerated by recently-installed cladding.

It is understood around £3.5m was spent on cladding the tower, a figure which had allegedly been limited on cost grounds.

A cheaper material with a combustible core was chosen over a fireproof version to make a saving of around £300,000, according to previous reports.

RBKC leader Elizabeth Campbell said on Wednesday that a total of £30m had been earmarked from the council’s reserves for the rehousing process.

A further £76m was later made available to buy homes from private social housing providers and the marketplace, as well as to help leaseholders secure new properties.