The fatal fire at a council-owned block in Daleham Gardens

• IN July the Regulator of Social Housing issued a notice against Labour-run Camden Council, highlighting over 9,000 outstanding pieces of fire safety work and “a longstanding failure by London borough of Camden to complete all fire safety remedial actions in a timely manner and to mitigate the risks to tenants in the meantime. As a consequence, tenants have been, and continue to be, exposed to potential harm”.

This notice came after a decade of fire safety failings, which included the Daleham Gardens fire that caused the death of Magdalena Fink, for which the council was prosecuted.

There can be no more excuses. The council must put in place a fire safety plan that will address the outstanding actions urgently. This plan must be subject to the highest level of scrutiny by members of the council.

To achieve this, the Liberal Democrat group requested the mayor of Camden call an extraordinary meeting of the council to focus on fire safety and to examine the council’s plans for putting things right.

The mayor refused to do so, insisting that the matter could be dealt with in just 45 minutes as part of the meeting already set for September 18.

This is wholly inadequate for members to examine and debate the council’s plans on such a critical issue, after a decade of failure.

It amounts to less than 0.3 seconds per outstanding fire safety action the council is supposed to take, or for contributions to the discussion of less than 40 seconds per member of the council.

And it is symptomatic of a wider malaise. The Labour administration loves to talk about things when they go well, but when things go wrong, such as with fire safety, will complacently assert that “appropriate steps are being taken”.

But it must be dragged kicking and screaming to acknowledge there is ever a serious problem. This is what we are trying to do by calling an extraordinary meeting, but sadly they won’t treat this critical issue with the seriousness it deserves.

CLLR TOM SIMON
Liberal Democrats
Leader of the Opposition