Royal borough of kensington and chelsea

[HopefulMog]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40316530?ns_mchannel=social&ns_source=twitter&ns_campaign=bbc_live&ns_linkname=40316530%26Deafening%20silence%20at%20town%20hall%26&ns_fee=0

"Silence: The scene at Kensington and Chelsea town hall
Donations have been arriving, but there is no one official in sight at Kensington and Chelsea town hall, as Laura Trant reports."

AIBU to be surprised that there is no one at RBKC town hall dealing with this emergency? What about distributing the goods? Where the man or woman with a plan?

I thought that we the tax payers pay the council to work for us the public.

I'm confused.

I have ranted endlessly about Theresa May today but where is Sadiq Khan? Why isn't anything being properly coordinated?


WTF is going on?

This is a humanitarian crisis. How can it be that the country I love and am proud of is not able to deal with this incident?

Also, AIBU to far that should an large scale terrorist attack happen the government would deal with it as appallingly as with the Grenfell Tower fire?

[Brittbugs80]

Control of the population by media, it's been happening for a while. When the London riots happened last time, journalists were antagonising the public and winding them up, knowing feelings were running high.

It looks like it's happening again.

[HopefulMog]

you know what, i am a lefty and appalled by the everything this government is doing but i have to admit that the BBC is stirring up emission with the way they are updating their live feed. I think they get advertising revenue from overseas users and am beginning to be a bit cynical about how emotive their reporting is at present.

[Mouikey]

I would imagine if it's anything like my local
Authority, that there should be an emergency planning team. They won't be visible to the public but would be working with all the emergency services. Although given it's London this may be slightly different.

Their role will be quite complex given the housing issues, and I would imagine that they will be focusing on them with voluntary organisations and churches focusing on the donations and distribution.

Somewhere there will be a gold command where all the relevant authorities get together regularly - messages to the media will be carefully managed. THe media will have an idea of this protocol but are certainly taking a particular stance for whatever aim.

However there is a sour taste given that the residents feel forgotten about and that should definitely not be happening.

[HopefulMog]

*stirring up emotions!

[moutonfou]

Everybody knows councils have been stripped to the bone and struggle to meet ordinary operational needs. The likelihood is probably that they are just not equipped - staffing-wise, resource-wise, and financially - to deal with the task of rehoming hundreds of people in 2 days. The government (who were the ones who cut the budgets in the first place) need to step in - this should be considered beyond council remit.

[Rumandraisin1]

Council funding and staffing have been massively cut across the country - although I didn't think (as a predominantly affluent, Tory area) Kensington and Chelsea was particularly badly affected. (I remember the amazing figure that social workers there have only 8 cases each whereas in other inner city areas it's not uncommon to have a caseload of 30 or more!).

I know other councils have emergency planning teams which prepare for incidents like this so I would imagine that K & C must have this too. The perception in the media seems to be that the council is doing nothing and, if that is the case, then that is appalling - but I also think there needs to be intervention from the national government due to the scale of the issue and the number of people left homeless.

I've heard people saying that the council needs to quickly re-house all the people who have been made homeless by this and within the local area - but I can't see how this is possible without national government intervention. Across the country there are massive waiting lists for council homes, with people in poor, overcrowded conditions waiting years to be re-housed - If K & C Council had 100+ council homes up its sleeves that it could immediately re-house these people into, you would have to question why they'd just had them sitting empty in the first place.

[Bunbunbunny]

No surprise at all, the council is understaffed a lot of services have been shipped out so much you can hire office space there. They set up a tri party agreement with other boroughs but it's fallen apart

www.rbkc.gov.uk/press-release/tri-borough-partners-split-2018

www.londonofficespace.com/a0jb000000tfmzweaa.htm

They've been disgraceful and it's not helping the anger felt in the borough, zero leadership from them, just reinforces the feeling that they don't care.

[agnesf]

See RBKC website here:

[https://www.rbkc.gov.uk/]]

"Town Hall Closed
The town hall has been closed following damage caused during a protest. Volunteers planning to attend tomorrow and Sunday to help sort donations should not come until further notice. Please check this website for further updates."

Presumably if you want to help you just email the address on the government website referred to on the same page.

Who knows what is going on? I'm hoping as someone who believes that the majority of people who work in the public sector are genuinely interested in serving the public, that somewhere in RBKC there are a lot of people working very hard to make things better.

However it's maybe not surprising that RBKC don't want their staff sitting in an office that could be the focus of angry protest but on the other hand their PR is not great.

[Toadinthehole]

It seems that Kensington and Chelsea had so much spare cash that they actually returned £100 to each ratepayer.

They chose to pay the money to people who don't need it over improving the safety of their tenants.

It seems that decision turned out to be critical.

[BigYellowJumper]

Yeah they had a huge underspend this year so don't believe this crap that they are too under-funded to have people on the scene there.

This incident has really made me realise that we need to look critically at things before just believeing what we think must be true.

[agnesf]

That's pretty depressing. I feel sorry for the ordinary admin people who work there.

[mathanxiety]

s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/c1/8c/70/c18c70a5e72458e96698d9a79f99fcdd.jpg

The blood money letter. The Council allegedly holds '£42 million surplus to requirements'.

[Terfing]

I presume that most government workers don't work on Saturday or Sunday anyway? And overtime is out of the question.

[agnesf]

A lot of government workers in my experience would be only too happy to come in and work overtime over weekends and evenings under the circumstances without asking whether they were going to be paid overtime. They are actually human beings too.

[olliegarchy99]

What I find surprising when looking at the council tax rates for kensington and chelsea the amount a band F house is LESS than I am paying for the same in a rural area. In fact, even a band H house in K and C pays less than I do.
Given that the payment includes the freedom pass from the GLC I do think the council could well have increased their council tax payments or introduced more bands to cover the multimillion pound homes.
I don't agree that council funding has been cut to the bone - I suggest you check out the reality. There is a lot of waste in local government.

[HopefulMog]

Why is overtime out of the question Terfing?

"If K & C Council had 100+ council homes up its sleeves that it could immediately re-house these people into, you would have to question why they'd just had them sitting empty in the first place."

Then the families will need to be given rivage accommodation and the council will have to pay for that. Children need to be bak at school and nursery, adults need to be at work, most of them are traumatised to varying degrees, they need to be able to access their GPs and possibly their social workers. After the horrific trauma they have gone through they shouldn't have to be left having, which they are right now. Especially as it seems that the council and government are in part resposinble for the incident. This has not been proven yet but experts think the way politicians and councils handled housing and complains it pretty obvious they failed to protect British citizens.

On another thread a poster said it remixed her of Hurricane Katrina and how appallingly Bush handled the crisis.

I ask this question again, do we have faith in our government's ability to protect us and handle the aftermath of a potential pandemic large scale terror attack or similar? What if 1000 people were displaced? or 1000s of people across the UK?

Do they deal more efficiently with flooding problems?

I'm trying to understand how it works or doesn't work.

Should the army be called in as they surely know all about bing organised and solving humanitarian crises.

[HopefulMog]

will need to be private accommodation

[SabineUndine]

I read that the Red Cross is now managing support. There's a report in the Telegraph.

[SabineUndine]

Also in The Times.

[HopefulMog]

Thanks Sabine, That's a good article.

[HopefulMog]

from the article

"The charity, part of the International Red Cross, which is more usually deployed in war zones and after natural disasters in the developing world, was recruited to give “psychological support” to survivors and the emergency services."

Doesn't reflect very well on our system does it?

[Melfish]

I live in another London borough and my council tax is £500 more per year for the same band. Our council have told us it's because they get a comparatively small amount from the government so we ratepayers have to sub them. I presume RBKC get a decent amount from the govt so can set the council tax rate lower. Whether they should is debatable.

[BeepBeepMOVE]

Well what are you doing to help other than moaning on the internet?

[HopefulMog]

Beep Why are you asking?

[BigYellowJumper]

beep

You don't think the government is better placed to help people than untrained individuals with no access to public funds/housing/resources?