Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation responsible for ‘chronic and systemic’ safety failings before Grenfell fire, inquiry concludes
Grenfell’s social housing provider was responsible for “chronic and systemic failings” in fire safety management, as well as a “toxic” relationship with the tower’s residents, who came to regard it as an “uncaring and bullying overlord that belittled and marginalised them”.
This is the damning conclusion of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry’s second and final report, which said the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO) “lost sight of the fact that the residents were people who depended on it for a safe and decent home”.
The tenant management organisation (TMO) “allowed” this relationship with its customers to deteriorate, which the report said was “a serious failure on its part to observe its basic responsibilities”.
However, the landmark report, which concludes four-and-a-half years of investigation, stopped short of making recommendations covering other social housing providers, saying reforms in the recent Social Housing (Regulation) Act were sufficient to deliver change.
In a press conference to launch the report on 4 September, inquiry chair Sir Martin Moore-Bick said the “simple” truth is that all 72 of the residents’ deaths were “avoidable”.
He said Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation was “badly run” and manipulated the process to appoint an architect to refurbish Grenfell Tower so it could select its chosen firm, Studio E.
His fellow inquiry panel member Ali Akbor said: “Residents deserve to be treated with understanding and respect. The Tenant Management Organisation failed to do that.”
Relations between KCTMO and its residents had been “troubled” for many years before the fire, according to the report, and by 2017, they had “deteriorated to the point at which they could be described as hostile”.
Ultimately, the inquiry concluded that the responsibility for maintaining the relationship between the TMO and the Grenfell community fell “not on the members of that community, who had a right to be treated with respect, but on the TMO as a public body”.