ON Saturday, residents and campaigners will come together at Kensington Town Hall to discuss the state of housing in a time of crisis and climate emergency.
 
In the middle of a city which already has a severe housing shortage, homelessness and major levels of inequality, lies the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC). 

The council’s Conservative administration has failed many of its poorest residents and with regards to Grenfell, the result has been the most disastrous consequences imaginable. 
                                    
RBKC has not only failed its existing residents with regards to safety and the provision of adequate housing, it has also failed to provide a reasonable level of social housing — only building eight council homes in 20 years. 

Its housing waiting list is one of the highest in the UK. Kensington and Chelsea has completed an average of just 61 genuinely affordable homes each year since 2014 — 80 per cent lower than the average.
 
Two years on from the Grenfell Tower fire, lessons still have not been learnt in RBKC, while the government has also failed to address the housing issues revealed by it. This is a national scandal, affecting those in both publicly and privately owned homes across the country.
 
Elsewhere in the borough, the Kensington and Chelsea part of the massive Earl’s Court Masterplan development envisages zero social, zero genuinely affordable housing and zero community infrastructure on the site.