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Grenfell Tower

Grenfell Tower is a derelict 24-storey residential tower block in North Kensington in London, England. The tower was completed in 1974 as part of the first phase of the Lancaster West Estate.[1] Most of the tower was destroyed in a severe fire on 14 June 2017.

This article is about the building. For the fire that destroyed it, see Grenfell Tower fire.

Grenfell Tower

Lancaster Tower

Awaiting demolition

London, W11
United Kingdom

1972

1974

2016

2017 Grenfell Tower fire

£10 million

Kensington and Chelsea London Borough Council

Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation

67.3 m (220 ft 10 in)

24

Clifford Wearden and Associates

A E Symes

Studio E Architects

The building's top 20 storeys consisted of 120 flats, with six per floor – two flats with one bedroom each and four flats with two bedrooms each – with a total of 200 bedrooms. Its first four storeys were non-residential until its most recent refurbishment, from 2015 to 2016, when two of them were converted to residential use, bringing it up to 127 flats and 227 bedrooms; six of the new flats had four bedrooms each and one flat had three bedrooms. It also received new windows and new cladding with thermal insulation during this refurbishment.[2]


The fire gutted the building and killed 72 people, including a stillbirth.[3] In early 2018, it was announced that, following demolition of the tower, the site will be replaced by a memorial to those killed in the fire.[4]


As of December 2022, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) has said that no firm plans exist for the tower, and that any decision will only be taken after community engagement.

Architect[edit]

Nigel Whitbread was the lead architect for the Grenfell Tower.[25] In an interview with Constantine Gras, quoted in The Guardian, he said that "he was born in Kenton, his parents had a grocer's shop on St Helen's Gardens, North Kensington. He was educated at Sloane Grammar school and then got a position with the architects Douglas Stephen and Partners, who, though small, were applying the principles of Le Corbusier and the modernists."[25] He worked alongside Kenneth Frampton who was the Technical Editor of the journal Architectural Design; and Elia Zenghelis and Bob Maxwell. He moved to work for Clifford Wearden after the basic plan for Lancaster West Estate had been established. He later worked for 30 years until his retirement at Aukett Associates.[26] Around 2016, he became involved with the local residents association drawing up the St Quintin and Woodlands Neighbourhood Plan.[27][28]

In 2013, the group published a 2012 fire risk assessment done by a (TMO) Health and Safety Officer which recorded safety concerns. Firefighting equipment at the tower had not been checked for up to four years; on-site fire extinguishers had expired, and some had the word "condemned" written on them because they were outdated and stopped working. GAG documented its attempts to contact Kensington and Chelsea TMO (KCTMO) management; they also alerted the council Cabinet Member for Housing and Property but said they never received a reply from him or his deputy.[30]

tenant management organisation

In November 2016, GAG warned that people might be trapped in the building if a fire broke out, pointing out that the building had only one entrance and exit, and corridors that were often filled with rubbish, such as old mattresses. GAG published an online article attacking KCTMO as an "evil, unprincipled, mini-mafia" and accusing the council of ignoring health and safety laws. In the blog post, they warned that "only a catastrophic event" would "expose the ineptitude and incompetence of [KCTMO]" and "bring an end to the dangerous living conditions and neglect of health and safety legislation" at the building, adding, "[We] 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!"[31]

[7]

A residents' organisation, Grenfell Action Group (GAG), published a blog in which it highlighted major safety problems. In the four years preceding the fire, they published 10 warnings criticising fire safety and maintenance practices at Grenfell Tower.[29]


Prior to a fire, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and central UK government bodies "knew, or ought to have known", that their management of the tower was breaching the rights to life, and to adequate housing, of the tower's residents, according to an enquiry by the UK Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) published in 2019.[32]


In 2020, survivors of the fire stated that "nothing has changed" three years later and expressed feelings of being "left behind" and "disgusted" by a lack of progress in making similar buildings safe.[33]

Grenfell Action Group

51°30′50″N 0°12′57″W / 51.5140°N 0.2158°W / 51.5140; -0.2158