Camden Council leader makes Chalcots Estate inquiry announcement

In 2022, then-council leader Georgia Gould said she was hiring a chairperson for the inquiry, intended to investigate how residents were left for years in tinderbox tower blocks on the Belsize Park estate.

But no appointment was ever announced and the council never mentioned the inquiry to residents again.

Questioned by the Ham&High last week, Camden claimed it had decided to put the inquiry on ice until after the Grenfell Inquiry completed its work.

New council leader Richard Olszewski has since announced in a press release: “Following the publication of the Grenfell report I have instructed officers to proceed with the scoping of stage two of the review."

Hasan Shah, a tenant representative for Burnham block, said he believed the Ham&High's intervention had saved the inquiry. 

“I think they found themselves in a corner and needing to look concerned,” he said.

“They kept saying to us, way back, ‘we are going to do it’, but then as things went on and on and on, it went quiet.

“We kind of felt like they weren’t going to do anything… I think there would have been so much coming out that could have made people at the council look incompetent.”

Nine days after the Grenfell Tower tragedy in 2017, hundreds of households were evacuated from the five Chalcots tower blocks near Swiss Cottage after fire inspectors ruled them unsafe due to flammable cladding, inadequate fire stopping, faulty fire doors and exposed gas pipes.

Phase one of the inquiry investigated the decision to evacuate. Phase two was supposed to investigate a £150m refurbishment of the estate nine years earlier and how it had been left riddled with fire safety defects.

Hasan said he therefore could not understand why the council would need to wait for the Grenfell report.

“It was nothing to do with Grenfell,” he said. “It was going to look at all the problems and issues relating to the Chalcots.”

“They’ve plucked an excuse out of the air, in my opinion,” said former Belsize Park councillor Steve Adams, now leader of Camden’s Conservative group, who also questioned Cllr Olszewski’s comment about now being able to start “scoping” part two.

Cllr Adams works in the construction industry and has aided residents in their campaigns for transparency and justice.

“I thought the scoping of one and two was done at the same time, which actually set the limit of one,” he said.

“The sound you can hear somewhere in the distance is that of a can going merrily down the road as it’s being kicked progressively.”

The council first blamed the delay of phase two on a pending £130m lawsuit against Partners for Improvement in Camden (PFIC), which delivered the 2006 refurbishment.

That lawsuit ended in 2022 with a £19m out-of-court settlement, which Camden had spent £6m in legal fees to obtain.

It was then that former Cllr Gould announced she was recruiting a chairperson for phase two – but the recruitment never materialised.

“It’s really important that we fully understand the full implications of the Grenfell report,” Cllr Olszewski said in this week's statement.

“That’s why our officers are analysing it right now with a view to applying it to future resident safety work here in Camden.

“The analysis of the report’s findings will also help to inform the second stage of our review and of course we will share findings as soon as the review is complete.”

Nigel Rumble, a tenant representative for Bray block, said: "I think this will be welcomed by all the residents and I will be very interested to see if it's public or private and if people like myself are invited to give evidence. I hope I will be. 

"I hope the scope of phase two will be everything: what decisions were taken at the council; who took them; who at the contractors took decisions; and who at the subcontractors took decisions. 

"I would be looking at the scope of what was promised to make sure the building was safe - which it turned out not to be."