A divide in power: How Grenfell exposed Britain's social housing crisis
The final Grenfell Tower inquiry has found that time and time again, tenants were ignored, dismissed and in some cases belittled, ITV News Investigations Editor Daniel Hewitt reports
This is about power - those who have it and those who don’t.
Those who are given the benefit of the doubt and those who are ignored.
Those believed and those not.
Grenfell is the greatest housing tragedy in modern British history.
People died in a tower block in the fifth richest country in the world, in its capital city dripping with wealth.
Why?
The deeply uncomfortable truth is people with power did not do enough to stop it from happening for years, multiple times. Call it missed opportunity, call it oversight, call it complicated, call it neglect.
Who cared enough to listen to social housing tenants when they reported problems over and over and over?
Who cared enough to make sure the material being used to house them wouldn’t kill them?
Who bothered to ensure those who survived were treated with dignity in proper housing.
Those who died, those who survived, were overwhelmingly working-class, overwhelmingly from ethnic minority backgrounds. Lawyers for the survivors called race the "elephant in the room".
Seven years. Do we live in a post-Grenfell Britain? Was it a moment where everything changed? Was it a turning point?
Four years ago I walked into a council tower block in Croydon and found dangerous, unlivable conditions that put tenants' lives at risk. They were living in the shadow of Grenfell, its echoes ignored.
Leory McNally, a social housing tenant who had complained time and time again about his unsafe flat, said to me: "When I used to ring up before, I'd say 'my name's Leroy, Leroy McNally' and I got a feeling that puts them on the off-foot because straight away they're (thinking) 'Leroy - black person, we don't want to deal with this person'.
"Eventually I started saying my name is Mr McNally - I wouldn't say Leroy - and I got a better response."
We said never again, but again and again and again social housing tenants have been ignored and dismissed by councils and housing associations across the country.
Tower blocks still burn. Dangerous cladding remains on buildings. Tenants still live in unlivable homes.
Who will be held accountable? And when? Any prosecutions that would likely come a decade or more after the disaster is justice delayed.
People who survived the fire have died waiting for today's report. It’s been an intolerably long wait to be told - ultimately - what people in the tower knew to be true all along: that their building was not safe, people in charge did not act and did not listen, people died, and they should all have lived.
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