Yahoo Finance Grenfell inquiry: Nurse ‘treated like a troublemaker’ when she complained about flat
A nurse who lived in Grenfell Tower said she was treated like a “troublemaker” when she complained to officials about the state of her home, she told the inquiry today.
Betty Kasote, who had a one-bedroom flat on the seventh floor of the west London tower, faced a string of problems in the years before the 2017 fire, including water leaking through her ceiling.
She was left with a boiler partially blocking her hallway after the building was refurbished, and said workmen carrying out the upgrade broke her furniture while rushing to finish.
Ms Kasote said she lodged complaints with Kensington and Chelsea’s Tenant Management Organisation (TMO), but they often did not respond.
“When I first moved in, the TMO would respond much quicker and were generally nicer and more responsive. As time went on, I felt that interactions with the TMO became much worse. Staff were shorter with me, and were less open to trying to sort things out for me - it felt like I had to chase and fight much more.”
When trying to get the water leaks fixed, she spoke to a complaints officer who was “very abrupt and short”, she said.
“It was like she was angry with me that I was making a complaint. I felt like they thought I was a ‘troublemaker’ because I had been making complaints about these leaks but I was incredibly stressed, had to take time off work, and the TMO did not seem to be doing anything else about it.
“I had no other option to complain but I felt like when I did, the TMO just got annoyed with me, rather than trying to sort out the problems.”
The inquiry into the fire which claimed the lives of 72 Grenfell Tower residents on June 14, 2017, is now hearing from a string of homeowners who made complaints.
Yesterday, Lee Chapman told the inquiry how he felt residents were treated as “sub citizens” when they tried to raise safety concerns with the TMO and the council.
He had complained repeatedly about the state of the building and shoddy refurbishment work, but said he was met with an “us and them” attitude.
“Ultimately we were people who wanted to feel safe in our homes, and this should not have been perceived by the TMO as something which was annoying or bothersome”, he said.
“I also believe that as residents in a so-called ‘social housing block’, we were treated as sub citizens or sub class.”
As secretary of the Grenfell Tower Leaseholders’ Association, Mr Chapman had been refused an independent fire assessment of the tower by the TMO, just months before the fire that claimed 72 lives.
When a fire safety consultant was hired by the TMO, Mr Chapman said he feared it was an attempt to silence the residents. “(The responses) made me have the impression that the council would essentially be against the residents because they might think: ‘They keep complaining so we need to prove that we are right,’” he said.
“That was the impression that I had at the time, that it was ‘us against them’, even though in my view we needed to work together to get this result.”
The inquiry continues.
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