Labour has complained that a specialist taskforce sent in to Kensington and Chelsea council to take over key services following the Grenfell Tower fire will have too few powers, saying the government remains “off the pace” in its response.
John Healey, the shadow housing minister, also said the announcement that just 14 of 158 families made homeless had accepted temporary accommodation, with three rehoused, three weeks after the fire showed progress remained too slow.
Alok Sharma, the junior communities minister, who updated the Commons on the response to the fire, said this was because the government did not want to pressure distressed families, especially those with relatives still in hospital.
“These families have been through unimaginable trauma,” Sharma said, in a sometimes emotional address that saw him near tears at one point. “And we need to go at the pace they need to go. What matters above all else is what the families individually want.”
Earlier, the communities secretary, Sajid Javid, announced an “independent recovery taskforce” to help the borough cope, managing the council’s housing, regeneration, community engagement and governance services.
Javid said: “The scale of the recovery effort needed on the Lancaster West estate in the months to come cannot be underestimated [sic] … This intervention is putting in place the foundations that will support the longer-term recovery.”
The new team is expected to be phased in as the current Grenfell Tower response team is gradually wound down.
The taskforce stops short of demands from Labour’s shadow communities secretary, Andrew Gwynne, and the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, for ministers to appoint external commissioners to take over the running of the whole council.
While it amounts to another admission of the scale of the failure at what was regarded as an effective council until the fire, Labour said it did not go far enough.
Speaking in the Commons, Healey said Kensington and Chelsea was “a failing council”.
He said: “It has even failed to admit is has failed. And the fundamental concern about this council is not just capability, it’s the total lack of trust that residents or anyone else has in it.
“The government concedes this by sending in a taskforce, yet leaves the council in charge. We, on this side, want the taskforce to work but doubt that it will.
“It can advise but it cannot act. It lacks the powers of decision or action that commissioners would bring. Public confidence in this council will just not be restored by replacing one set of leaders by politicians from the same ruling group.”
In his statement, Sharma conceded again that “the delivery of the initial response on the ground was simply not good enough” and promised the government would seek to win the trust of local people.
Speaking on the government’s self-imposed three-week deadline for those made homeless to be offered new housing, Sharma said 158 households had been identified as needing temporary housing, of whom 139 were “ready to talk to the housing team”.
A total of 200 properties in and around the same areas were available, Sharma said, and had been fully inspected. So far, 14 offers of temporary accommodation had been accepted and three families have moved in.
Sharma said: “But we have to accept the pace at which the families want to move. No one will be forced into a home they do not want to move to.”
Pausing several times to regain his composure, Sharma said his visit to meet families affected by the fire was “the most humbling and moving experience of my life”.
He said: “The families that I have met have been through unimaginable pain. This is a tragedy that should never have happened. And we are determined to do all that we can to make sure that something like this never happens again.”
On Monday, Kensington and Chelsea elected the former education cabinet member Elizabeth Campbell as leader, replacing Nicholas Paget-Brown, who stepped down last week.
Campbell said she had called on Javid for more help: “The unprecedented scale of this incident makes it impossible for one organisation to cope on its own. That’s why my first action as leader was to ask DCLG [the Department for Communities and Local Government] for help, and I’m delighted they have been so swift to respond.”
The move was given a cautious welcome by Labour’s Karen Buck, who represents the neighbouring area of Westminster North, but in a tweet she called for residents to be involved:
Finally, recognition of the scale of the Kensington's failure post #Grenfell. But will residents be involved and task force win confidence? https://t.co/8EAXfv92lX
— Karen Buck (@KarenPBuckMP) July 5, 2017
Also on Wednesday, Sir Martin Moore-Bick, the retired judge chairing the public inquiry into the fire, launched a consultation into its terms of reference after ministers hinted it could be broadened to satisfy the concerns of residents.
Moore-Bick had warned residents he had been asked to conduct a narrow inquiry, but he now says he wants to “consider a broad range of evidence”.
Launching the consultation on the scope of the inquiry, he said: “I want to hear from people directly affected by the fire and others involved, to listen to their views on the shape of the inquiry’s work and the questions we should be seeking to answer.”