David Craig, on May 22nd, 2018(Tuesday blog)
Emma Dent Coad has (as far as I’m aware) been one of the most vocal critics of the Council and made her maiden speech in the Commons about the Grenfell Tower fire. Emma Dent Coad has accused Tory-led Kensington and Chelsea Council of failures that led to the blaze, claiming “poor-quality materials and construction standards have played a part in this hideous and unforgivable event”.
The fragrant Emma Dent Coad seems to be a good chum of Jeremy ‘Lenin’ Corbyn:
Emma Dent Coad is possibly the person who has screamed loudest in attacking the Conservative-run council for the 72 deaths in the Grenfell fire. But here are some (inconvenient for Dent Coad) facts:
1. The Tory council was not responsible
The block of flats was run not by the Council, but by Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO).
In the early 1990s, the tenants and leaseholders of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea decided to pursue their legal right to manage their own homes. Following two separate ballots in 1994 and 1995, the KCTMO was established on 1 April 1996 and the responsibility for managing 9,760 properties passed from The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea to the KCTMO.
The Council still owns the properties and retains responsibility for strategic housing policies and homeless people. The relationship between KCTMO and the Council is governed by a Management Agreement, which covers all areas of the landlord business. Whilst KCTMO still enjoys a close working relationship with the Council, it is a completely separate company.
In 2002 KCTMO took over the responsibility for major capital works from the Council to access extra resources and funding to enable KCTMO to bring the properties up to the Decent Homes Standard.
KCTMO is managed by a Board of Directors comprising of 8 elected tenant and leaseholder members, 4 appointed Councillor members and 3 independent appointed other members.
Shall I repeat that? KCTMO is managed by a Board of Directors comprising of 8 elected tenant and leaseholder members, 4 appointed Councillor members and 3 independent appointed other members.
This means that the majority of people running the KCTMO accused of “not listening to tenants” were tenants and/or leaseholders!!!!!
So, if Labour or Corbyn or John McDonnell or Khan or the BBC or C4 News are looking for their “Grenfell Tower murderers”, they can find them among the people responsible for running the KCTMO and not the Council.
When the much-maligned head of the Council stated something like “the tenants didn’t want the disruption of installing sprinklers” he was probably correct in that it would have been the KCTMO, majority run by tenants (and not the Council), that took the decision not to spend an additional £138k on fitting sprinklers.
Of course, the Council’s response to the fire was dismal. Probably, most of the councillors are pompous, self-important, self-serving, verbally-flatulent, incompetent buffoons (as are most people serving on councils – Labour and Tory). But legally and morally, responsibility for management of social housing lay with the KCTMO and had the Council tried to interfere with the KCTMO’s work, there would have been the usual lefty libtard howls of outrage against the supposed privileged ruling classes denying council tenants the right to manage their own homes.
Guess who was one of the 3 appointed Councillor members (from 2008 to 2012) of the KCTMO, that was responsible for the building works and accused of “not listening to tenants”. Yup, you guessed, it was (I believe) none other than Labour MP and former Labour councillor for many years Emma Dent Coad.
Ooops!
Given that it takes a few years to plan a large refurbishment like the one done at Grenfell Tower and given that the disastrous Grenfell Tower refurbishment took place between 2014 and 2016, it would seem that Emma Dent Coad would probably have been involved in the planning and budgeting for the works.
Doube ooops!
2. Emma Dent Coad was also responsible for lots of other things
As a councillor (I believe since since May 2006), Emma Dent Coad was (I believe) on Kensington and Chelsea’s Housing and Property Scrutiny Committee, which oversees “community safety issues”, until May 2014. A 2014/15 report, in which she is named, says the committee scrutinised work on Grenfell Tower.
Triple ooops!
Moreover, Emma Dent Coad has been active in deciding building matters for many years as she was also (according to Wikipedia) on the Council’s Major Planning Development Committee.
That makes quadruple ooops!
3. Labour introduced the legislation empowering tenant management organisations
The laws laying down the rights of tenants to create Arms Length Management Organisations (ALMO) such as the KCTMO were made under the Right To Manage legislation passed in 2002 as part of the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act.
This was put in place to give leaseholders and tenants stronger and well-defined legal rights to a greater say and the ability to self manage (which in some circumstances has clearly proven to be flawed).
Who was in a charge when this law was passed? It was Blair’s New Labour.
Moreover, as far as I understand, many of the buildings now being found dangerous – due to flammable cladding, defective fire doors, inadequate sprinklers etc – (such as the Chalcott Estate high rises re-clad in 2006) were refurbished during Blair and Brown’s period in power from 1997 to 2010, not during supposed “Tory austerity”.
And which political party do you represent, Emma? Yup, Labour who set up the arrangement separating management of social housing from council control.
Quintuple ooops!
4. Labour and Dent Coad are responsible for the ‘under-funded’ London Fire Service
London’s Mayor, Sadiq Khan has made lots of political capital by claiming that London’s Fire Service was underfunded and that the Fire Service’s advice for people to stay put was responsible for so many deaths.
But who is in overall charge of London’s fire service? Labour London Mayor Sadiq Khan!
Moreover, Sadiq Khan as mayor of London produced a report to say that the fire service did not need further funding. And I suspect Mr Khan has been extraordinarily generous with taxpayers’ money when it comes to funding Religion of Peace community groups giving them millions that could have been spent on better equipment for the London Fire Service. Moreover, I seem to remember that just after being elected Khan spent several hundred thousand pounds of London taxpayers’ money setting up a special police unit to investigate supposed ‘hate crimes’ and ‘hate speech’. Perhaps Mr Khan’s priorities were slightly misplaced?
Anyway, moving on guess who was a member of Mayor Khan’s London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority – surprise surprise it’s none other than our favourite Labour Councillor and now Labour MP Emma Dent Coad.
It seems to an ignorant, imbecile like myself that Emma Dent Coad has been very busy indeed with building management and fire safety issues both in the borough and throughout London until things go wrong! Then she launches her (IMHO self-serving?) tirades of criticism at the bodies of which (as far as I understand) she was a leading and influential member.
Of course, all this is just my opinion – the opinion of an obvious ignoramus.
But if I am right, I believe we should salute Grenfell Tower’s most successful survivor – Labour MP Emma Dent Coad – who has managed to escape any blame for the disaster despite being (in my ignorant and humble opinion) deeply involved in almost all aspects of the management and performance of the KCTMO, the council’s planning and building, London’s fire service and Grenfell Tower’s disastrous refurbishment.
Well done, Emma!
As for the mainstream media coverage of the inquiry – one thing we can be absolutely sure of is that nobody will mention MP Emma Dent Coad’s involvement in so many groups relevant to the fire. In fact, the BBC and C4 will probably make great efforts to give Emma Dent Coad a platform to keep on blasting the ‘evil Tories’ running the Council.
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Most informative David. Many thanks. I guess we already knew that hundreds of thousands will be spent on this enquiry, that it will trail on for months (possibly years), that “hearts will be going out” all over the place, that more “lessons will be learned” than ever before, that lawyers will come out of it very nicely indeed, thank you, and that in time the same sort of thing will undoubtedly happen again – – different place, different cause, same sort of victims. Just fairly ordinary working class folks, some hard-working, others less so, some honest, some less so, but all going about their daily lives reasonably confident that nothing appalling is likely to them. The likes of the evidently Teflon-coated Emma Dent Coad have much to answer for.
GREAT WORK DAVID!
Why not mail this information to Conservative Central Office and every Tory MP and see if there is any response. Or are they too consumed with virtue signalling rather than the truth and uncomfortable facts?
Excellent investigative report. revealing the truth to people reveals just the sort of people we are ‘governed’ by
Why should I email this story to the Tories? I already do enough by researching and writing this blog.
The greatest escape was the chap with the fridge who seems to have vanished not even stopping to collect his compensation and free stay in a 5 star hotel. Was it a bomb factory? Who knows but given the efforts by the establishment to look in the other direction and not see anything wrong suggests something fishy was probably afoot. The fridge was recently absolved of all charges.
I too was wondering about him twi5ted…..very little has been made of his story/ back-story in the media…..very suspicious indeed.
VERY interesting Gloria and twi5ted. Never occurred to me – well done for pointing it out. It does seem rather odd……….. All I heard at the time was that he’d legged it pdq. Perhaps he thought re-appearing wouldn’t be very good for his health!
I feel sorry for the few English people that had to live and die with these invaders. Nobody seems concerned that entire high rise building are full of parasitic foreigners.