Everyone agrees the Grenfell Tower disaster must usher in a new era of social housing in the UK. The danger is that it sends us back to a very old era, when the council owned, managed and controlled community housing.
There is another way forward, one which meets the rightful sense of injustice felt by people living on Lancaster West, the estate where Grenfell Tower stands – not the injustice of a botched refurbishment which (probably) caused the tragedy, but the injustice of residents not being listened to when they raised concerns, over many years, about their safety or quality of life.
For decades – indeed, since 1974 when the tower was built despite growing evidence that most families didn’t like high-rises, and designs like Lancaster West created ghettos – the estate was treated like a feudal demesne.
