The Global FoodBanking Network (GFN) is pleased to launch their new website and new look! The GFN goal is to provide our visitors an easier way to learn about the mission, programming, and impact that GFN and its food banks partners are making on hunger. 

Visit www.foodbanking.org to learn more.

Image: Global FoodBanking Network (GFN)

The Social Security (Emergency Funds) (Amendment) Regulations 2017 has been laid in parliament by new Work and Pensions Secretary Greg Clark and comes into force on Monday 19 June.

The rule change means victims of the Manchester Arena bombing in May, which left 22 killed and more than 110 adults and children injured, can receive compensation from the £11.2m We Love Manchester Emergency Fund without having their benefits cut.

"The We Love Manchester Emergency Fund has been established to swiftly provide funds to the families of victims of the attack at the Manchester Arena, to help them to cope at this incredibly difficult time," said the Lord Mayor of Manchester, Councillor Eddy Newman.

"The fund will make payments to help families who are in need - including those who are faced with funeral costs and individuals who may have suffered life changing injuries.

"The fund has been established after countless people, from Manchester and from around the world, expressed their desire to help."

Newman added: "We are incredibly grateful to the huge amount of people reaching out to offer their support. This incredible response is a testament to the true spirit of the city of Manchester, which remains open for business despite this horrific attack."

Likewise, those injured or the families of those killed during the Westminster Bridge terror attack in March and the London Bridge and Borough assault in June can claim money from the London Emergencies Trust without having their benefits stripped.

The DWP also confirmed that recipients of the government's £5m Grenfell Tower Residents' Discretionary Fund will keep their benefits.

Every household whose home has been destroyed because of the fire will receive a guaranteed £5,500 minimum down payment from the fund, the government has said.

The payments will be made up of a £500 cash payment and £5,000 delivered through the DWP into bank accounts or similar in a single payment.

The measures are designed to prevent a dispute seen in the wake of the 2005 London bombings, which saw some survivors face benefit cuts after receiving compensation from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA).

A separate charitable fund was also established, London Bombings Charitable Relief Fund (LBRCF), which eventually raised more than £12m. The organisation was chaired by Gerald Oppenheim, who now chairs the London Emergencies Trust.

ABC Note: It is widly belived there has been a cover up over the numbers of people that died at Grenfell Tower. Some have argued that as many as 300 people are missing, many of them children. 

Image: Justice for Grenfell Tower Victims

A website for a charity for the homeless, www.whitechapelcentre.co.uk, seen on 5 February 2017, stated "NO SECOND NIGHT OUT ON THE STREETS. TELL US ABOUT A ROUGH SLEEPER" and featured a telephone number. Text below stated "Have you seen someone sleeping rough? Are you worried about someone who may be sleeping on the street tonight? If you know someone who could use our help, simply complete the form below, call us on XXXX XXX XXX (low cost) or e-mail. The Whitechapel Centre is co-ordinating the Liverpool outreach response to rough sleeping as part of the No Second Night Out campaign. By providing us with information about someone you think might be sleeping rough you will be helping us ensure no one ever needs to sleep for a second night on the street. Our vision is that no one will live on the streets of Liverpool and no individual arriving on the streets for the first time will sleep out for more than one night. Through dedicated outreach services we will provide a rapid response to ensure appropriate solutions to rough sleeping. Help us to achieve this and ensure no one sleeps on the streets of Liverpool for a second night by telling us about anyone you think may be sleeping rough ..."

A poster on the website stated "THERE MAY BE A MILLION REASONS WHY SOMEONE SLEEPS ROUGH FOR ONE NIGHT. THERE IS NO REASON FOR ANYONE TO SLEEP ROUGH A SECOND NIGHT. TELL US ABOUT A ROUGH SLEEPER ON XXXX XXX XXX AND WE WILL DO THE REST".

Issue

The complainant challenged whether the ad misleadingly implied the charity provided housing to individuals so that they did not have to continue sleeping rough, whereas he understood they provided a more general service that homeless people could use.

Response

The Whitechapel Centre said they provided general homeless services for people who were living on the streets, including housing support and advice, supported accommodation, outreach services, training and enablement services and volunteering. They explained that the 'No Second Night Out' standard referred to in the poster was a service that they delivered on behalf of Liverpool City Council, which was intended to ensure someone arriving on the streets for the first time did not spend a second night sleeping rough.

The Whitechapel Centre said that to prevent someone from spending a second night out, they needed to understand why that person had ended up living on the streets. By establishing the cause of an individual's homelessness they were able to provide a personalised solution that worked for the individual. They offered a range of solutions depending on the person's needs, which included advice and support to negotiate a return to former accommodation (where that was an option), support into treatment or hospital services, or to gain access to new accommodation. They managed some accommodation themselves and worked in partnership with a range of providers of other types of accommodation. Where they were unable to secure a same-day solution to rough sleeping, they provided interim accommodation solutions, for example, a 'Cold Weather Shelter', which was available to all rough sleepers. They also offered a 'Sit-Up Service' which was a communal room in a nearby hostel which had members of staff on duty throughout the night. They explained that if they were unable to place someone in the right accommodation that day, they could access the Sit-Up Service and return to the centre at 8 am the following day and wait for accommodation to become available. They worked to ensure that individual stayed at the Sit-Up Service until suitable accommodation was found.

They explained there were a few occasions where they were limited in what they could offer to someone, for example, in relation to failed asylum-seekers and some EEA Nationals who had no recourse to public funds. For people with no recourse to public funds who had no access to welfare benefits and no means to pay for accommodation, they offered funded reconnection to the individual's place of origin and helped to secure accommodation for them. For EEA nationals with no recourse to public funds, they helped those individuals to try to secure employment and source accommodation, for example, via the Missionaries of Charity. The Whitechapel Centre acknowledged that some individuals did not want to be reconnected to their place of origin or were not employment-ready and, in those circumstances, individuals they had tried to help may spend a second or subsequent nights sleeping rough.

Liverpool City Council reiterated the Whitechapel Centre's comments that "No Second Night Out" was a standard, rather than a service. They said it was based on the principle that there were various reasons why individuals may have to spend one night out on the street, but there was no reason for anyone to spend a second night out, because there were services to help them move away from the streets. The main service was an outreach team from the Whitechapel Centre, which was funded by the Council, who actively went out looking for people who were sleeping rough. The team had access to a range of services, also funded by the Council, including accommodation and emergency shelter. They also provided a building-based service where people could have hot meals and showers, and access to laundry facilities and computers. Individuals were also supported to write CVs and seek employment. For people from outside the city, including from overseas, when it was safe for the person to return home, there was a reconnection offer. Help was also offered in relation to wider issues such as substance misuse and mental health problems.

They explained that the ad was designed and developed by the Council to encourage everyone in the city to take some responsibility for helping rough sleepers and to publicise the telephone number members of the public could use to alert the outreach team to an individual sleeping rough. The team would then go out, find the person, and facilitate whichever solution was needed to bring them indoors. They said it was important to be aware that housing was not the only solution for rough sleepers. Some may already have somewhere to stay and the reasons for them sleeping rough were complex and could include mental health or substance misuse issues. That was why it was important that every individual helped by the service was offered a personalised solution.

Liverpool City Council said that in addition to the outreach service, they ensured they met the "No Second Night Out" standard in other ways. For example, the Housing Options Service was used to assess those who may be statutorily homeless and to try and prevent homelessness from occurring. In addition, they commissioned, monitored and funded 750 units of temporary accommodation for people at risk of homelessness or who had other vulnerabilities. They explained that rough sleepers had priority access to those services through dedicated ring-fenced beds. They also offered Personalised Solutions Funding which could be used to support people to leave the streets, for example by clearing rent arrears. Furthermore, they offered simplified access to temporary accommodation services and to other support for vulnerable people through MainStay.

Assessment

Not upheld

The ASA noted that the ad did not explicitly refer to accommodation services being provided by the Whitechapel Centre. We noted that the ad was a call to action and encouraged members of the public to call the telephone number provided to report any individuals sleeping rough so that the Whitechapel Centre could help to get them off the streets. We understood that "No second night out" was a standard rather than a service. However, we considered that consumers were likely to interpret the ad, particularly the claims "No second night out on the streets" and "By providing us with information about someone you think might be sleeping rough you will be helping us ensure no one ever needs to sleep for a second night on the street" to mean the Whitechapel Centre would assist those individuals reported to them so that they did not have to sleep on the streets for another night.

We understood that the Whitechapel Centre's outreach team responded quickly when notified of rough sleepers and they would actively go out onto the streets to find them. We also understood that they offered a range of assistance to those individuals, depending on their particular needs and reasons for sleeping out on the streets. One of the solutions that could be offered was accommodation, either in a property they managed or managed by a third-party provider. Whilst that might not be an appropriate or available solution for everyone, the Centre also offered temporary accommodation throughout the night for all individuals (the Sit-Up service and cold weather shelter), until such time as a more permanent solution could be found. Because of that, we considered that the ad was not misleading.

We investigated the ad under CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1 3.1Marketing communications must not materially mislead or be likely to do so.  and 3.3 3.3Marketing communications must not mislead the consumer by omitting material information. They must not mislead by hiding material information or presenting it in an unclear, unintelligible, ambiguous or untimely manner.
Material information is information that the consumer needs to make informed decisions in relation to a product. Whether the omission or presentation of material information is likely to mislead the consumer depends on the context, the medium and, if the medium of the marketing communication is constrained by time or space, the measures that the marketer takes to make that information available to the consumer by other means.  (Misleading advertising), but did not find it in breach.

Action

No further action necessary.

Image: Whitechappel Homeless Centre

The DWP has suspended normal rules for claimant affected by the Grenfell Tower disaster. Rules which include sanctions routinely issued to claimants who miss appointments have been suspended indefinitely for former Grenfell Tower tenants and other local residents who claim unemployment benefits, it has emerged.

According to the Guardian a DWP spokesman said: “Anyone affected by the Grenfell Tower fire who misses an appointment or is unable to meet their job-seeking requirements will continue to have their benefits paid in full. Our staff are handling people’s claims with sensitivity, understanding and flexibility and we have put extra support in place for anyone who needs it.

The urge to go on-line and post images or text about whatever we think needs some thought

Omega Mwaikambo was hauled before Court after taking grim photographs of a dead body from the Grenfell tower block fire in Kensington, West London, on Wednesday. The authorities are talking a tougher line regarding hate speech and other malicious communications. Nothing wrong with constructive criticism, but merely showering abuse and making false accusations or libellous statements could land you in Court facing fines and a prison term. 

In light of the spate of recent prosecutions, and the DPP’s consultation exercise, Lilian Edwards looks at s 127 and what might be done about it

Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003,  once one of the more obscure provisions of the cybercrime world, has had a good workout lately. Famously, Paul Chambers, delayed at Doncaster Airport and frustrated at possibly not getting to see his girlfriend, was accused and convicted of sending 'by means of a public electronic communications network a message or other matter that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character' (s 127(a)) because he had sent a humorous and frustrated tweet saying: ''Crap! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I am blowing the airport sky high!!'.

 After a long period of civil liberties campaigning, support from celebrities and comedians and sustained outrage among the Twitterati sub nom #TwitterJokeTrial, on the third attempt, an appeal court. saw sense and conceded that ''a message which does not create fear or apprehension in those to whom it is communicated, or who may reasonably be expected to see it, falls outside this provision [of the 2003 Act]'. In other words, a joke issued to the world as well as the very people it might offend and indeed identified with the real name of the author, is clearly not meant to be taken seriously and thus is neither menace nor threat for any reasonable person.

Meanwhile, however, s 127 prosecutions continue or are urged on by a public increasingly fed up with an increasing variety of online racist bullies, trolls, stalkers etc. For example, in early 2012 racially motivated tweets posted relating to the footballer Stan Collymore were also prosecuted under this legislation. In late September 2012, Neil Swinburne, 29, was also prosecuted under s 127 for putting up a page apparently glorifying an alleged murderer of a policeman http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/sep/20/police-killings-arrest-cregan-facebook Meanwhile on the very same day, the DPP, Keir Starmer, was driven by the rise of s 127 prosecutions and apparent mounting calls for its catch-all use in any case of disturbing content on social media, to declare that he would be issuing guidance on social media prosecutions. Asked to consider whether to prosecute Daniel Thomas, who had made trollish and homophobic tweets about the Olympic diver Tom Daley,^[4] the DPP indicated that s 127 should not be seen as a carte blanche for prosecuting content which, however upsetting to some, would normally fall with guarantees of freedom of expression in a democratic society. In particular he quoted the seminal ECHR case of Handyside v UK. which says that freedom of expression includes the right to say things that 'offend, shock or disturb the state or any sector of the population' before concluding that prosecution in the Daley case would not be appropriate.

We therefore now await the promised guidance. But as the editor of this journal has cogently pointed out, guidance on its own is simply not good enough. The law itself must have a quality of predictability and certainty, otherwise the rule of law is in jeopardy. This is especially true of a criminal provision which restricts freedom of expression. Why then, we might ask, is s 127 drafted so widely? Partly because, although it appears to be a modern post-Internet provision , its direct and very close antecedents actually date from long before the Internet era and even before Handyside. These antecedents include the Post Office (Amendment) Act 1935 (and two subsequent PO Acts) - which dealt with messages sent by post and telephone - the British Telecoms Act 1981 and the Telecommunications Act 1984, s 43. Section 127 of the 2003 Act basically repeats the 1984 Act provision wholesale, itself almost a word for word repetition of these earlier Acts. The 1984 Act was notable for changing the scope to apply to any 'public telecommunication system' (a necessity following the deregulation of the state monopoly telephone network in 1981). This phrase itself was taken, it seems, from EC telecoms law, and causes problems of its own, debated in Chambers (see further below).

The legislative history of s 127 is usefully narrated in DPP v Collins  a case involving a man who made repeated telephone calls to his local MP's office asking for him to do something about the 'black bastards' – and similar even more unpleasant terms. He was charged with sending 'grossly offensive' messages under s 127. On appeal to the House of Lords, the charge against Collins was upheld but what is particularly interesting for present purposes lies in LJ Bingham's analysis at [7] of what the purpose of s 127 is.

It is crucial here, parenthetically, to note that s 127 is hardly a lone legislative bulwark against Internet trolls and harassers. There is an abundance of law to deal with what the CPS calls 'communication offences' or alternately 'public order offences'.^[7] Indeed so much law is available to charge social media content that appears to offends the (or a) public that it is often hard to find out from journalistic coverage exactly what legislation is being used, though the majority of cases involving Twitter do seem to use s 127. For example, in another recent controversial case, 19-year-old Azhar Ahmed was convicted of 'racially aggravated public order offences' after he posted an angry Facebook status update about the reporting of the latest British Army fatalities in Afghanistan. It appears s 127 of the Communications Act 2003 was used to charge in this case, but such cases could however also fall under the Public Order Act 1986 (POA), s 18 . By contrast, when Liam Stacey, a 21-year-old biology undergraduate, made 'racially aggravated comments' (ie tweets) about footballer Fabrice Muamba, he was apparently charged under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 before being sentenced to 56 days in jail. Other sections of the POA are also potentially relevant to social media comments: notably s 4A which deals inter alia with 'threatening, abusive or offensive words' which cause 'intentional harassment, alarm or distress'.

The Protection from Harassment Act 1997 (PHA), which operates slightly differently in England and Scotland, has also been used successfully on several occasions to charge trolls who send repeated upsetting or vile messages to users on sites like Facebook and Twitter. The PHA prescribes that any two 'acts' which form a course of harassing conduct can be charged as a crime. These provisions were recently used by, eg, Nicola Brookes,  who, to great publicity, won a Norwich Pharmacal  order against Facebook in order to reveal the true names of, and start proceedings against, her online trolls under the 1997 Act. An Adjournent Debate in Parliament  on 17 September 2012 noted not only these but also the possibilities of using the Public Order Acts and the Computer Misuse Act. Private civil damages can also be obtained both under the PHA and by common laws like libel.

Finally there also exists (albeit in England and Wales only), the Malicious Communications Act 1988 which, though little mentioned in recent social media cases, still exists and is of significance as a contrast to s 127. Again a pre-Internet statute, its original target seems to have been poison pen letters, although it was updated in 2001 to apply to 'electronic communications' - 'oral or otherwise' But the speciality of the 1988 Act is that it is intended to apply only to one-to-one exchanges and not to one-to-many broadcasting. It explicitly prescribes that the communication must be 'sent to another person'. So the 1988 Act would not, it seems, apply to Paul Chambers telling the world at large about his frustration at Doncaster Airport, nor (say) the racist bullies who left tweets for Fabrice Muamba and Stan Collymore but also distributed them to the world.

Thus, returning to LJ Bingham in Collins, he observed (at [7]) that the existence of the 1988 Act and thus he deduced the purpose of s 127 was 'not to protect people against receipt of unsolicited messages which they may find seriously objectionable'. Instead, it is 'to prohibit the use of a service provided and funded by the public for the benefit of the public for the transmission of communications which contravene the basic standards of our society'.

A lot can be unpicked from this interesting dictum. LJ Bingham is here partly making the distinction raised above between an offence of sending criminal content to one person (intended to be covered by the Malicious Communications Act) and broadcasting it one-to-many (which he sees as within the scope of s 127). This was relevant for the Collins case as the people whom the communications might reasonably have 'grossly offended' were seen as, generally, people of ethnic background - who had not personally received the calls - as opposed to the MP's staff, who had. Accordingly it was held that under s 127 it was not necessary for the actual recipients of the communication to have been grossly offended. - an objective rather than subjective test.

But the judge was also clearly aware that the preceding ancestor statutes to s 127 originated from a time of state monopoly services over post and phone when it would have been impossible for an ordinary person using only ordinary postal or phone facilities to broadcast their views. This was true even at the time of the Telecommunications Act 1984 – which is the first of the statutes in question to use the phrase 'public telecommunication system' – since the Internet could not be regarded as publicly available in the UK before the early 1990s^[12]. What LJ Bingham seems to home in on, then, is that s 127, as originally formulated back in 1935, was not just about public morality but also about not wasting public money on transmitting material which was unpleasant to the public. As such, the words used extend to categories of speech which are wider than the bare minimum acceptable in democratic society. Section 127 is thus readable as the heir to provisions which once reasonably criminalised even what would now be permitted speech using the Handyside test. The proximate reason s 127 is thus more restrictive than the ordinary criminal law on speech not  via electronic means is crucially not because a distinction is made between online and offline speech, but because it involved a public facility such as the postal service, or later, pre-deregulation British telecoms services.

Yet this justification for the broad extent of s 127 no longer exists in the cases surveyed above, such as those involving Chambers, Swinburne and Thomas. Twitter is a private service run on private servers. So is Facebook. People use the Internet to access it, yes, but this at most now involves the use (sometimes) of the facilities of former public utilities. In essence, however, communication on social networks is privately funded and devoid of any concern for public funding priorities.

In Chambers, this point was indirectly raised with a defence run that Twitter was not a 'public electronic communications network'. However, this defence was dismissed by the lower court in   Chambers v DPP and not re-addressed by the appeal court. Crown Court Judge Davies agreed that 'the fact that [Twitter] is a private company is in our view irrelevant' and  'the mechanism by which [the tweet] was sent was a public electronic network and within the statutory definition... Twitter as we all know is widely used by individuals and organisations to disseminate and receive information,, it is inconceivable that grossly offensive, indecent, obscene or menacing messages sent in this way would not be potentially unlawful' ([2012] EWHC 2157 (Admin) at [23]).

This is, with respect to the honourable judge, not an ideal interpretation. Defining Twitter and its ilk as 'public telecommunications networks' (PCNs) raises serious problems in terms of the bad fit with the EC Telecoms Framework and the complex web of laws and definitions associated with it and implemented into UK law. Watson and Ingram note, elsewhere on this site, that defining social networks as PCNs implies a great many duties on to them supervised by Ofcom including universal service, maintaining 999 emergency numbers, data retention for law enforcement agencies and so forth. In EU-speak, social networks are not categorised as PCNs but as providers of information society services – giving them a far less regulated status, and with benefits such as immunity from liability for third party content, subject to respecting notice and takedown.

But more than this, to define Twitter as a PCN is also to imply that the public authorities have a right to censor speech on Twitter more extensively than they are permitted generally to do so by Handyside  and similar freedom of expression case law. This seems neither right nor appropriate.

This, in my view, is the nub of what has gone wrong with s 127 lately. Statute law designed:

 (a) primarily to regulate one-to-one communications, rather than one to many broadcasting (whatever LJ Bingham said, it is clear almost all the wording of s 127 comes directly from statutes mainly intending to deal with malicious one-to-one phone calls or letters); and

(b) designed to safeguard a public utility built with public money,

is now being applied to a privately owned, though publicly accessed, many-to-many communications domain.

The DPP's statement re projected guidance for s 127 shows the results of this tension.  Section 127 is not drafted to fit modern guarantees of freedom of speech in public; and while both courts and prosecutors will no doubt do their best to interpret it in line with Article 10 jurisprudence, for them as well as defence lawyers and ordinary folk, this will be a hard and unpredictable task.

Here is a suggested way forward. Abolish s 127 with all its ambiguities and loose wording and extend the Malicious Communications Act to apply to the whole of the UK. That deals with one-to-one abusive electronic communications which have been acknowledged as a social ill since the days when all we had was the post and the telephone. Rules criminalising abusive communications on a one to one basis do not chill public speech but do punish acts which create apprehension and invade privacy; the social ill is very different. But then stop, and have a decent debate about how to regulate one to many, public communications on the Internet and especially on social media. Such a debate needs to take into account excessive use of the PHA and the POA as well as s 127. And it needs to happen soon: the promised guidelines are a sticking plaster but as we all know, plasters do not stay on long.

In essence, what is needed is a manifesto for altering norms of behaviour on social media to reflect the demands of a civilised world for civilised discourse, while not prejudicing the unprecedented opportunity the Internet offers to expand social participation. This is a debate about emerging norms, about generational gaps, about digital natives, silver surfers, changing patterns of news acquisition and media literacy, as well as regulation - indeed it is a debate which, this writer suspects, may ultimately have almost nothing to do with law.

Lilian Edwards is Professor of E-Governance, University of Strathclyde. The piece first appeared in slightly different form on Professor Edwards' blog Pangloss,   http://blogscript.blogspot.co.uk/   

.

Sir Vince Cable has seized on Philip Hammond’s admittance that the public are “weary” of austerity by calling for an end to the public sector wage cap – which will see fire fighters an estimated £1,423 worse off in real terms by 2020/1.

Liberal Democrat shadow chancellor Sir Vince Cable said: 
 
“The public pay cap was necessary to tackle the massive deficit but firefighters such as the heroes of the Grenfell Tower disaster cannot be expected to suffer real falls in living standards indefinitely.
 
“They are already suffering a Brexit squeeze with rising prices and a falling pound. The challenge of public sector pay is an example of why Philip Hammond must win the battle within government to remain in the single market and customs union or the fall in tax revenue will make it impossible to give public sector workers the pay rises they deserve. You can't have an extreme Brexit and decent public sector pay.”

Image: Sir Vince Cable MP 

A rare honour indeed. Simon Collyer has written an article The Lessons from Grenfell Tower published at the Barrister magazine website. The Barrister is the largest circulation magazine for Barristers practising in the UK. We are very proud and excited that the ABC’s views should be aired on such a prestigious publications website.

We hope our article will create a greater understanding of the issues of the poorest in society. Barristers are highly educated and live in a world that, compared to most people, is very privileged indeed. Yet Barristers are immersed daily, dealing with the everyday problems, the misjudgements, foibles and failures of individual human beings - problems that only the Law and a fair system of justice can resolve.  

We need a new attitude in the UK regarding housing. The Conservatives are coming under enormous pressure, however Labour Councils in London are also responsible for the way that poor people and ethnic minorities have been treated or ignored.

The public want answers NOW about Grenfell Tower. They want a list of residents and an accurate list of the missing presumed, dead. Those living in high rise tower blocks want their fears addressed. A full inspection of properties and safety issues acted on.  

We can all play a part by keeping up the pressure on Councils and MP’s. Above all, we need to start treating people on low incomes as human beings with the same rights and importance that we spare for those with wealth and standing in society.

‘CHANGE’ said President Obama and that’s what we need in the UK, NOW. 

We sent our Letter to the Editor to a number of publications such as newspapers and journals in the legal profession. Also to the Editor of the London Evening Standard George Osbourne.  

Don't count on it being published however. 

Letters to the Editor

Dear Editor

The Conservative Government has created a climate of arrogance and contempt towards people on welfare benefits in order to discredit claimants who are being subject to frozen benefits, unfair cuts and sanctions. It is no surprise at all that the Grenfell Action Group gained little traction for their complaints and concerns about safety from their landlords - The Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation. The opinions of the poor count for little when you have a government involved in social cleansing, driving the poor out of London, where many members of the government have vested property interests.

The attitudes whipped up by the government, the DWP and the right wing media against the disabled and those on out-of-work benefits, has created a climate where the opinions and concerns of those on low incomes count for little.  

Would complaints by rich tenants in Knightsbridge have been ignored in the same way by the management group? Wealthy tenants have access to lawyers, unlike the poor who have had Legal Aid taken away.  

The government are complicit in this disaster in the way that they have engineered public opinion against the poor, the disabled and the wage-less. Had the ordinary people been listened to, this disaster may have been averted.

Sincerely,   

The Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation was established on 1 April 1996, when it assumed management of 9,760 properties from the council. Run by a board of 13 tenants, it was described at the time as "one of Britain's most ambitious property management schemes.

Grenfell Action Group, the block's tenant organisation, had repeatedly warned of major fire safety lapses since 2013. A blog entry posted on November 20, 2016, described KCTMO as "an evil, unprincipled, mini-mafia" and predicted that only a "catastrophic event" leading to "serious loss of life" such as "a serious fire in a tower block" would result in change. 

From the Grenfell Action Group Blog

Fire Safety Scandal At Lancaster West

Posted on January 28, 2013 by grenfellactiongroup

One of the concerns raised by the Grenfell Action Group when we were opposing the KALC development was the impact the loss of the Lancaster Road car-park would have on the community in the Grenfell Tower area. Because vehicular access to Grenfell Tower, and the several low-rise blocks adjacent to it, is severely restricted, the Lancaster Road car-park has served a vital function over the years for residents parking, service and delivery vehicles etc. It has even been used as a backup parking area by the London Fire Brigade because emergency access to the Grenfell Tower area is so restricted.  We argued that the loss of the Lancaster Road car-park would inevitably increase the pressure on Grenfell Road, which is now the only vehicular access to a large part of the southern half of Lancaster West Estate. Everything that moves in or out of this area, including all goods and services, comes through a single narrow and congested corridor – Grenfell Road.

Grenfell Tower stands at the end of this narrow corridor. Parking along Grenfell Road is restricted to resident permit holders only, hence there is no casual parking allowed in the whole area. As it approaches Grenfell Tower the road takes a sharp left turn into the final approach to the tower. From this corner onwards emergency access restrictions apply and are supposed to be strictly enforced and carefully monitored. There should be no parking at any time in this area except for emergency vehicles only. Indeed, there is barely adequate room to manoeuvre for fire engines responding to emergency calls, and any obstruction of this emergency access zone could have lethal consequences in the event of a serious fire or similar emergency in Grenfell Tower or the adjacent blocks.

In recent months we have observed frequent breaches of the emergency access restrictions in this area, by both service and private vehicles. We began complaining to the estate manager in October 2012, and had to renew our complaints in December. At the same time we began accumulating photographic evidence of multiple breaches of the emergency access zone, which were occurring on a daily basis, as well as at weekends, with the apparent consent and complicity of estate staff. Attempts to engage with Siobhan Rumble, the TMO Neighbourhood Manager at Lancaster West, were less than fruitful. She fobbed us off with misleading and ambiguous answers refusing to accept that there was an ongoing problem.

Eventually, with support from Cllr Judith Blakeman, who had witnessed some of the parking infractions in question, we succeeded in badgering Ms Rumble into inviting the local Station Manager from the London Fire Service to visit on 20th December. We later received an account of this visit from Janice Wray, the TMO’s Health and Safety Officer, via an email response she had sent to Cllr Blakeman at the time.

Strangely, on the day of the inspection all appeared to be hunky–dory, and the Fire Officer witnessed no vehicles parked illegally or obstructing the emergency access route in any way.

One has to wonder how it could be that every time we visited the area during that week, and on subsequent occasions, we were able to take photographs (some of which are reproduced here) showing multiple and continuous obstructions of the emergency access zone, but on the single occasion of the Station Manager’s visit (pre-arrangerd and by invitation) he found no evidence of any obstruction.

We are not in a position to accuse TMO officers of conniving to mislead the London Fire Service, and of playing russian roulette with the safety of local residents, and nor would we presume to make such accusations. We do, however, invite our readers to study a selection of the many photographs we took, and to form their own conclusions. We would be more than happy to make our evidence available to fire officers, and have already offered to do so. However Ms Rumble ignored our requests to be provided with the contact details of the Station Officer in question, who appears to have been badly misled and misinformed.

We are aware of the difficulties faced by Lancaster West staff who struggle to somehow provide access for TMO and other service contractors, but have nowhere to legally park them. Pressure on staff to bend the rules has certainly increased since the Lancaster Road car-park was swallowed up by the KALC construction site. However their primary and most fundamental duty must be to secure and protect the single narrow emergency access corridor on the only remaining approach to Grenfell Tower and adjacent residential blocks. Knowingly compromising this essential emergency access for the convenience of staff and service vehicles would be highly dangerous, criminally negligent, and could prove lethal in the event of a serious fire emergency – which could occur at any time.

On top of this, major works are expected to start soon on Grenfell Tower, which will require the movement of large quantities of materials, plant and equipment through this same narrow access corridor. The logistics of this will be very challenging, and the safety of residents must not be compromised, but how can we trust estate staff to safeguard emergency access in the face of these new challenges when they are already playing fast and loose with the safety of residents before the works have even begun?

MS RUMBLE AND HER BOSSES AT THE TMO NEED TO GET A GRIP – AND SOONER RATHER THAN LATER.