Met says Grenfell Tower council 'may have committed corporate manslaughter'

[Equinox Moon]

Source: Guardian

The Scotland Yard investigation into the Grenfell fire disaster has said there are “reasonable grounds” to suspect the council and the organisation that managed the tower block of corporate manslaughter.

The two organisations under suspicion are Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation.

The law on corporate manslaughter would require any prosecution to prove that there was a gross breach of a relevant duty of care owed to those who died.

Around 80 people are estimated to have died in the disaster with the fire spreading so fast and reaching temperatures of 1000C, experts are struggling to identify the victims. Families have been warned they may not have the remains of their loved ones returned to them.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jul/27/met-says-grenfell-council-may-have-committed-corporate-manslaughter

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"corporate manslaughter" Wow.

[chowder66]

1. Wow is right! nt

[Warpy]

2. Well, they don't have the DP in the UK, so since a corporation lacks an arse to kick

or to jail, they'll have to fine them to death plus encourage lawsuits. The fact that they opted for cosmetic upgrades instead of tenant safety through sprinklers, firestops, and the smoke abatement system the stairwell was supposed to have but didn't is criminal. Whoever made those decisions is guilty of mass murder, IMO.

[burrowowl]

3. What is good in many European countries is that

corporate heads can be prosecuted and JAILED!

[Igel]

4. Most people think Microsoft when they think corporation.

They don't think of things like Greenpeace or your local Episcopal church. Some are for profit, some are non-profit; some are political, some engaged in advocacy, some engaged in education, and some engaged in purely money-making activities. But they're all corporations. A group of people who organize for a given purpose in which to invest their assets and activities for a given purpose.

The second organization's website is http://www.kctmo.org.uk/index . It's basically an HOA for the tenants. They elect the organization leaders who have a say in what gets collected and how it gets used. Think "residents' association". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kensington_and_Chelsea_TMO says it's large. Don't get all the details, the government structure is too different from Texas. The Grenfall towers organization apparently really despised it, but that's how it usually goes with tenant groups versus management, even if management is also a tenant group.

The first organization is the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. It's the lowest level of government. Imagine that your city or town is divided up. I live in Houston: There's the municipal government that covers millions of people. Police, libraries, trash pickup and recycling. Now imagine that there's the central government for some things, but your neighborhood (a few adjacent, if small) are bundled together with your own library, parks, garbage-pickup contact. That one office coordinates all the local services that the city offers. That's the borough council. I'd suspect that government money would be funneled through the council; after all, Grenfall towers was "council housing."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kensington_and_Chelsea_London_Borough_Council_elections#2014-2018 says that the by-elections in 2015 went mostly conservative.

[T_i_B]

5. The question I keep asking here....

...is how long will it be before the government suspends the elected council over this and appoints commissioners to run the borough. This is what happened to Rotherham over a major child sex abuse scandal, although the government may be very reluctant to take that action against a Conservative council.

[dembotoz]

6. if the building was up to code.....

what the should have done is not relevant.
you act on the information you have