11th February
Dear Councillor Foreman,
I am now writing to you, formally, on behalf of the Lancaster West Residents Association, the Grenfell Action Group and the Grenfell Tower Leaseholders Association to request that our local Ward Councillors facilitate a Community Meeting (as referred to in my emails to Councillor Blakeman on the 8th and 5th Feb 2013) to address resident’s legitimate concerns about the ill treatment of our community?
We request this meeting takes place without any undue delay and that Councillor Coleridge ( in his capacity as the Council’s KALC representative and Council’s Housing Cabinet Member) along with a representative from the Planning Dept. (Mr Bore?), also, attend.
Needless to say, the residents that elected you to represent our community expect your earnest co-operation with the above request.
Kind regards,
Edward Daffarn
Grenfell Action Group.
13th February
Dear Eddie
I have seen your e-mail of 11th February 2013 to Cllr Todd Foreman, inviting him to attend a public meeting called by yourself. In the same e-mail you suggest that I might wish to attend such a meeting.
Since the beginning of this project you have made it clear that you do not want either the new Academy to be built, nor the new Leisure centre. The decision to go ahead was democraticaly made by the Royal Borough Council, the British Government who are providing a grant of £17M, the local Planning Authority and the Mayor of London. Since these democratic decision have been made they have been accepted by the vast majority of local residents (many of whom are looking forward to a new academy for their children and a new leisure centre), but apparently not by you. You continue to do all you can to disrupt and delay the project, causing considerable extra work for officers, contractors and Councillors. If you have a legitimate complaint to make it will be dealt with properly, but your long trail of e-mails over months and months leads me to believe that you have your own agenda, which is not a positive one for either the future school or local residents interests. Local residents want the work finished on time, and to be able to enjoy what will be a much improved environment.
Eddie, so long as you continue to hound our officers and local councillors to satisfy your own agenda I am unwilling to attend a meeting called by yourself. I believe it was you that sprayed some offensive messages on the hoardings (you have not denied it) and this apart from being criminal damage was upsetting to local residents, and has for me called into question your motives.
Sincerely
Councillor Coleridge
20th February
Dear Judith,
I take great exception to the tone and content of your email, in which you appear to accuse me, and other members of the Grenfell Action Group, of making complaints “couched in tendentious, abusive, offensive and bullying terms”.
You also accuse us of making “vexatious complaints that are intended solely to delay the completion of the construction works”.
If you have evidence to support either of these accusations kindly produce it without further delay. Otherwise I must ask that you desist from making such false and scurrilous accusations, which I note that you have copied widely in an apparent attempt to damage our reputation and undermine the legitimacy of the concerns and complaints we have quite properly raised, and will continue to raise.
The position taken by the Labour Group, and by Notting Barns ward councillors in particular, in supporting the RBKC decision to impose the hated KALC development on this totally unsuitable site was disgraceful and completely indefensible. The situation that now prevails is that the residents of Grenfell Tower have been deprived, and will remain deprived for the duration of the works, of all residential amenity space, including the small playground for pre-teens that used to stand next to Grenfell Tower, and which is now completely destroyed.
Where will the children of the Grenfell area play? Where will the toddlers of the area play? How can the elderly and infirm venture outside to take the air or to sit in quiet contemplation? There was a time when Labour Party councillors could be counted on to defend the rights of the poor and powerless. This is clearly no longer the case, at least not in Notting Barns, hence the formation of uncompromising action groups such as ours.
I presume that your accusation of “vexatious complaints intended solely to delay completion of the construction works” refers to our recent efforts to resist the Council’s illegal closure of the rights-of-way through the area now occupied by the KALC site. According to feedback I received from yesterday’s Community Forum, Leadbitters and the Council have now acknowledged the hardship these closures cause to local residents, particularly the most vulnerable, and have agreed to re-open a north/south right of way through the centre of the KALC site.
The complaints against the closures, championed by our Mr Daffarn, and to which you appear to have taken particular and very personal exception, have clearly been entirely vindicated, although the apology Mr Daffarn was seeking, on behalf of the community, has yet to materialise. If you had an ounce of integrity you too would be demanding that apology.
Your use of the terms “abusive, offensive and bullying” was also extended to an accusation that our members had behaved in such a manner at ward councillor’s surgeries. This accusation appears also to be directed specifically against Mr Daffarn, who assures me that he hasn’t actually attended one of your surgeries for several months, and certainly did not behave in an abusive or bullying manner when he did.
One has to wonder why, if Mr Daffarn’s behaviour was so troubling, you waited five whole months before complaining to me about it. One has to wonder also why you would direct this complaint to me at all. I am not Mr Daffarn’s keeper. If you have a problem with him I suggest you sort it out with him. I know that I have never found his behaviour abusive, offensive or bullying, and I do not recognise your characterisation of him – or perhaps I might more correctly call it your character assassination of him, because I am quite sure that this is your true intention – both yours and that of Cllr Coleridge who has already insulted, falsely accused, and tried to provoke Mr Daffarn in an earlier email (to which you also refer)
Incidentally, your reaction to Cllr Coleridge’s attack on Mr Daffarn:
“TIM, FANTASTIC, THANK YOU SOOO MUCH, JUDITH”
strikes me as a particularly disgusting, odious and completely inappropriate attempt to humiliate and provoke Mr Daffarn beyond endurance.
Cllr Coleridge and yourself both occupy positions of considerable power within the Hornton Street establishment, yet you abuse your power to intimidate and threaten him, and then have to effrontery, like Goliath confronting David, to call him the bully. There is someting especially odious about the way that you have conspired together to attack the character and reputation of this local man who has done no more than dare to challenge your abuse of power and unprincipled betrayal of the Lancaster West community, and to fight to defend local residents against the juggernaut of this rotten and unprincipled Tory Council.
Yours most sincerely,
Francis O’Connor
Grenfell Action Group 