Grenfell Tower Inquiry Second Witness Statement
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GRENFELL TOWER INQUIRY SECOND WITNESS STATEMENT OF EDWARD DAFFARN 1. I make this second statement in connection with Phase 2 of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry. In this statement I intend to build upon some matters set out in my Phase 1 statement dated 15 May 2018 (IWS00000169). My principal focus is on Modules 3 and 4 of Phase 2, but there are some matters that I raise that will be relevant to the Module 1 analysis relating to the commissioning, design and building of the refurbishment works and their implications for fire safety. 2. What follows is based upon matters that are within my own direct knowledge and those I believe to be true based upon documents I have seen, or conversations I have had with others. I used to keep documents such as leaflets, paper diaries and hard copies of meeting minutes but these documents were all destroyed in the Grenfell Tower fire. I have therefore been assisted in recalling events and key dates by considering emails, letters and materials attached to emails, blogs and other publicly available documents. I have particularly referred to the Grenfell Action Group ('GAG') blogs, because their text is a real time commentary on the events that I deal now with. I will refer to GAG throughout this statement and in doing so the Inquiry should be aware that in some instances GAG emails and blogs were drafted by Francis O'Connor, in others, by me, most often they were a collaborative effort. It has caused me a great deal of upset that despite a number of people within the Grenfell community advocating on his behalf, Francis O'Connor has not been granted Core Participant status in this Inquiry. As a result, one of the most passionate and knowledgeable voices concerning events prior to the fire has been airbrushed from this Inquiry. PARTI:BACKGROUND 3. In terms of my own personal background I am 57 years of age. I grew up in Kensington and Chelsea but attended Woolverstone Hall Grammar School outside the Borough. I moved in to Grenfell Tower in 2001. I am a Mental Health Social Worker by profession, 1 Edward Daffarn IWS00002109/1 IVVS00002109_0001 having qualified from Brunei University with a BA degree in Social Work in 2006. I am not an expert in fire safety and have never professed to be. In my dealings with the TMO, RBKC, LFB and others I just raised issues that I felt affected - or could affect - the residents of Lancaster West Estate, our safety and quality of life. Sometimes those matters touched upon fire safety and on other occasions they did not. In addition to my activism in support of residents of Lancaster West Estate and Grenfell Tower I have been involved in campaigns to save Womington College, North Kensington Library, the West London Community Riding Centre, Canalside House and the community use of the land under the Westway. These are all much loved community resources. 4. I have not found it easy to prepare this statement. It would be impossible for me to express every detail and every experience I had living in Grenfell Tower which have informed my opinions of RBKC and the TMO. Mter the passage of time, and what has happened since, it remains difficult for me to remember specific events, or exactly where certain events arose in the chronology. I have been deeply affected by the fire and its aftermath and continue to receive support and treatment. However, I want to engage with the Inquiry in the hope that you will have an accurate picture, from a resident's perspective, of what life was like living in Grenfell Tower under the control of RBKC and the KCTMO. 5. I have now read some of the statements and documents provided by RBKC and the TMO. They paint a very rosy but untruthful picture of both their efforts and integrity. I have been lucky in many ways in my life and never had cause to feel I had been treated unjustly until I lived in Grenfell Tower. I have said before and I will say in this statement that in my view the KCTMO was a non-functioning organisation which was not motivated by the wellbeing of tenants but was driven by pure self-interest. It had a monopoly to provide social housing for the entirety of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) and so it was able to act like a mini-mafia. I do not use the word mini-mafia glibly or unthinkingly. I cannot find a better way to describe the culture of the organisation. 6. I never believed that the TMO was capable of keeping residents safe. I never witnessed it to be properly scrutinised by RBKC; and I never saw the TMO acting in a properly accountable fashion. The underlying reasons for this lie in the culture of governance that 2 Edward Daffarn IWS00002109/2 IVVS00002109_0002 prevailed and because the personnel held prejudiced views about how residents should behave: essentially to be thankful for their service; or effectively be damned. Their dealings with me were institutionally biased, and in many instances, animated by individual prejudice. In their eyes I was stigmatised as a 'trouble maker'. They went out of their way to discredit me, my views were there to be managed, or discounted, or both. There was an incentive for RBKC not to properly scrutinise the TMO and of course an incentive for the TMO not to be properly scrutinised. I hope some of what I have to say in my evidence to the Inquiry will help to explain why I came to all my views over the 16 years I lived in Grenfell Tower and why GAG ultimately wrote a blog on 20 November 2016, which said that only a serious fire in a tower block would be the reason that those who wield power at the KCTMO would be found out and brought to justice (IWS00000169_0040) "Unfortunately, the Grenfell Action Group have reached the conclusion that only an incident that results in serious loss of life ofKCTMO residents will allow the external scrutiny to occur that will shine a light on the practices that characterise the malign governance of this non-functioning organisation. " "It is our conviction that a serious fire in a tower block or similar high density residential property is the most likely reason that those who wield power at the KCTMO will be found out and brought to justice!" "The Grenfell Action Group predict that it won't be long before the words of this blog come back to haunt the KCTMO management and we will do everything in our power to ensure that those in authority know how long and how appallingly our landlord has ignored their responsibility to ensure the health and safety of their tenants and leaseholders. They can't say that they haven't been warned!" 7. The fact these words turned into reality stands as a social indictment against those who were placed to prevent it. I was an activist trying to prevent these people from harming us and I have to live with the consequences that I failed to do so. I blame them for good reason, and the rest of this statement is designed to provide the evidence available to me to the Inquiry as to why my attitude is reasonable. I have to somehow find my own words to explain the power imbalances and human shortcomings that were at play here. The best and most appropriate quote I have to summarise the attitude of RBKC and the KCTMO is from King Lear where Shakespeare records the triumph of the wicked: 3 Edward Daffarn IWS00002109/3 IVVS00002109_0003 "As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport" 8. If you have not lived through this or been dependent on the whims of others, it is easy to not register what I am trying to convey. Residents were treated as an afterthought throughout by the Council, TMO and their contractors, if we were thought about at all. This goes for the purported consultation and planning of KALC, through to purported consultation and planning and execution of the refurbishment of Grenfell Tower, how the TMO and RBKC dealt with our complaints and warnings. Some of what we experienced was encapsulated in the Executive Summary of the Grenfell taskforce report published in October 2017 which recorded as follows: "RBKC failed its community on the night of 14 June and in the weeks following. Prior to that we have heard that RBKC was: distant from its residents; highly traditional in its operational behaviours; limited in its understanding of collaborative working and insular, despite cross borough agreements; and with a deficit in its understanding of modern public service delivery" (ED2/l: ) 9. In terms of the attitude of the workmen of Rydon and its subcontractors there was one incident that summarises how I feel residents were treated. It was during a meeting with Rydon in the show flat, Flat 145, during the refurbishment works which I believe took place in December 2014 or January 2015. A Rydon worker, Jason North, was asked by a resident about the unsightly work they planned in our flats, and whether he would like it in his own home. Jason replied saying something like: "I wouldn't mind if I were getting it for free". This attitude, that we were getting the refurbishment ''for nothing' so shouldn't complain, permeated the whole refurbishment process. 10. In my own professional life as a registered mental health social worker I could not, and would never wish to, discriminate against clients of mine who objected to the State's intervention in to their lives.