Grenfell tragedy, the latest..
Friday, Downing Street has rebuked the Kensington and Chelsea council as the meeting was stopped due to the media presence.
Within 20 minutes of the meeting starting amid total chaos and “madness” the council leader, Nicholas Pagent-Brown said that an open session will place the investigation at risk.
A spokesperson for Number 10, said Friday: “Access to democratic process should be always easy and that is vital to maintain confidence in the democratic system.
“The High Court ruled it should have been open and they should have respected high court decision.”
Pagent-Brown, said Thursday: “I think it’s extraordinary this idea that the authority is now going to have no substantive discussions in public about the fire between now and the end of the inquiry for fear of prejudicing the inquiry.
“I’ve been reporting on local authorities for over 30 years and I’ve never seen an authority behave in this way in these sorts of circumstances.
“I think there’s a real need by the authority and other agencies in dealing with this to be as open as possible.
“Clearly there are feelings and rumours and stuff going on social media saying there is a cover up.
“If they want to counter those rumours… the last thing they should be doing is holding the meetings in private and then cancelling them so they aren’t open to public scrutiny.”
Labour councillor, Robert Atkinson has called for the resignation of the cabinet and the council leader and accused them of “hiding away.”
The London mayor, Sadiq Khan branded it as “madness” and said: “You have a situation where that community have a deep level of mistrust of the local council, of national government, and if I’m being frank, people in positions of power and influence.
“For the council, at the first opportunity they had to provide some answers and to be transparent, to ban local residents and to ban journalist’s beggars belief.”
Khan also said that residents have “no confidence in the local council” as residents “feel let down” by government.
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