Streathamite
ideological dogmatist
Utter bastards.
Labour actually deserve credit for trying though
Utter bastards.
I think it will be about obeying the tory whip but worried about her electorate. Well out to lunch whatever.HUH???
She can't be that thick. Can she???
Oh, agrreed, absolutely, but she must have realised there will be no shortage of people pointing this out to voters in Kensington, and I think we can assume those voters can read, and had what you might call a fairly strong reason to take an especial interest in that bill.I think it will be about obeying the tory whip but worried about her electorate. Well out to lunch whatever.
Daily news outlets are struggling to find 'relatable' stories and this one is a classic example of something which isn't nearly as interesting as it seems. The guy in question left the employment of Harley, the specialist cladding design and construction subcontractor, in March 2016. So before the completion of the refurbishment and over a year before the fire. He was allowed to keep his work laptop on condition that he deleted anything related to his employment. Somehow this material also got deleted from the company server as well. His boss, when asked about this, suggested the guy had 'arranged for this to be done'. Questioned about it the guy himself said he didn't have access to the company server and hadn't done so. Whatever actually happened it seems far from clear that it happened in order to 'cover up' anything regarding the fire.They were not lost. They were destroyed. Another fucking crime.
Thesee are useful updates. Please keep on posting them.Last week's witnesses were
(Amongst other things some interesting further detail about the discussions the TMO had with Rydon about cost cutting while tendering was still underway. Artelia say that had they known the nature of these it could have led to the tender process being voided. And more detail about the unhappiness with Rydon's peformance during the contract).
- the former head of RBKC Building Control
- three employees of Artelia, the employers agents, CDM coordinators and quantity surveyors employed by the TMO.
BBC Podcast here. An unofficial transcript of the podcast here. And this week's Inside Housing Grenfell Diary is here:
Grenfell Tower Inquiry week 13: ‘Value for money is to be regarded as the key driver for the project’
The Inside Housing diary doesn't deal with the evidence from RBKC Building Control.
Inside Housing's account of that is here (although FWIW I think the account in the BBC podcast is better) :
Head of RBKC building control denies ‘culture of bullying’ at the council
There are now unofficial transcripts of most of the BBC podcasts for this module of the Inquiry here.
Starting on Monday witnesses from the TMO. I expect this to be an interesting week.
[He] will start reading into the work of the Inquiry immediately and will join the Panel from 2 November. Ali will sit for the duration of the Inquiry and, alongside his two fellow panel members, will be jointly responsible for the whole of the Inquiry’s Phase 2 work.
The Grenfell Tower landlord held a secret meeting to cut refurbishment costs – including discussing the switch to cheaper cladding – despite being warned by lawyers that it would break procurement law and could void the main contract, the public inquiry into the disaster was told.
David Gibson, head of capital investment at the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO), which operated the council tower block for its owner, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, organised a “secret” and “offline” meeting with the contractor Rydon in which they agreed more than £800,000 in savings, he told the inquiry on Thursday.
The 18 March 2014 meeting was not minuted, but Rydon subsequently agreed to drop landscaping works, cut the cost of windows, and switch more expensive zinc cladding panels for the aluminium alternatives which became the main cause of the spread of the June 2017 fire that claimed 72 lives.
The exercise cut the budget from £9.2m to £8.4m. The £293,368 saving on cladding amounted to less than £2,500 per apartment.
would conspiracy to pervert the course of justice be a possible remedy?Interesting developments at the start of the hearing this morning. Apparently, late on Friday afternoon the solicitors acting for the TMO informed the Inquiry that Peter Maddison, the TMOs Director of Assets and Regeneration between 2013-16, had just remembered he still had a set of work notebooks and diaries which hadn't been disclosed, either to the Inquiry or the Police. The Inquiry is scrambling to assess and disclose this material - several hundred pages - to core participants.
Since Maddison was due to start his evidence tomorrow morning this has created a scheduling problem. The Inquiry team have proposed that after asking Maddison about his failure to disclose this material tomorrow morning, the hearing is then adjourned until Wednesday. This is to give core participants time to respond to these documents. Maddison will then be giving evidence for the rest of this week and probably the start of next. The Inquiry's expert witnesses will then give evidence which will carry over into the following week. This revised timetable is still subject to discussions with core participants.
Once Claire Williams (the TMOs project manager for the refurbishment), resumed giving her evidence she was asked about notebooks. She revealed that she had handed one notebook covering 2017-18 to the TMOs solicitors but that she had "binned" her other notebooks when clearing her desk at the time she left the TMO in May 2018. This led to some sharp questioning during which she stated that nobody had instructed her about retaining relevant material. Whether or not what she says about this disposal is true, it raises very uncomfortable questions for the TMO, and also for the solicitors who were advising it at the time. (Apparently not the same ones acting for it now).
Later in her evidence a set of cost spreadsheets came up which it appeared the Inquiry also hadn't received from the TMO's current solicitors. And earlier. in addition to Maddison's notebooks and diaries, it was stated that another relevant document about resident involvement in the tender process had only just been disclosed. This all gives the impression of a rather deeper issue than just Ms Williams notebooks.
would conspiracy to pervert the course of justice be a possible remedy?
and why she didn't appear to follow it up when she got no reply.“Simon, I’m just writing to get clarification on the fire retardance of the new cladding – I just had a ‘Lacknall’ moment.”
the master criminal always makes one fatal error and theirs is to freely admit to all manner of peculiar behaviour when they've had three years to get their stories straightInside Housing's story about this mornings developments (archived)
KCTMO project manager admits destroying evidence relating to Grenfell refurbishment after fire
To reiterate what I said above I got the impression that the issue of failure to disclose seems to go somewhat deeper than Ms Williams actions. I imagine Mr Maddison will be questioned closely about this tomorrow and I would assume the issue of how the Inquiry's requirements were conveyed to him will be tackled. (As I understand it he left the TMO before the refurbishment was completed).
Given that this is emerging from admissions freely made by these fuckers it seems a rather odd sort of conspiracy to me. Nonetheless I imagine the Police will be planning some interviews.
Ms Williams still has to give evidence about the email she sent Rydon in 2014 saying
and why she didn't appear to follow it up when she got no reply.
“You binned them even though you knew by that time there was already on foot a public inquiry?” asked inquiry chair Sir Martin Moore-Bick.
“I believe I looked at them and they were notes. Everything that was in there, I would have thought is actually documented elsewhere,” she replied.
“I think I just tidied out the desk,” she added. “I would have looked at them and thought nothing here that isn’t informal evidence. And so I got rid of them.”
“Can you explain why there’s nothing in any of your witness statements about your record keeping and in particular your decision to destroy records relating to the project that you’ve had in your possession?” (Counsel to the Inquiry) Mr Millett asked.
“There was nothing underhand about it – I was clearing my desk. I looked and decided that everything that was in there… was of little value,” she replied.
“Did you ever inform the Metropolitan Police that you had destroyed documents which were relevant to their investigation?” asked Mr Millett.
“No, I didn’t, because it’s not occurred to me. Today is the first time that I’ve ever really had a conversation about it,” she said. “They weren’t destroyed. I didn’t rip pages out of them… So it wasn’t a conscious ‘I’m hiding anything’ decision. It was, ‘I’m clearing my desk’.”
“Well, they were destroyed, you binned them,” said Mr Millett.
“I put them in the bin, yes,” replied Ms Williams.