Following the devastating fire at Dalston Lane on 5 June 2024, displaced residents’ have experienced a lack of care or support from Peabody. The cause of the fire is still unknown. What we do know is that the fire risk assessment for the building was wrong, something Peabody knew about.
The Residents’ Association have formally complained to Peabody about these issues. You can read our complaint below and follow its progress here.
Complaint about Peabody’s handling of the Dalston Lane fire
Dear Peabody Complaints Team,
Summary
I am writing to you as a Joint Chair of the Pembury Estate Residents’ Association to make a complaint on behalf of residents of Dalston Lane who lost their homes in the fire of 5 June 2024.
The complaint is about (1) the failure of appropriate governance across Peabody, leading to the unacceptable lack of support or care for these displaced residents; (2) failures by Peabody staff to follow policy or put in place any form of business continuity; (3) failures by Peabody to follow its legal obligations regarding fire safety; and (4) the continued delay in investigating and disclosing the cause of the fire.
I would like this to be treated as an official complaint. Do not treat this as a request for service recovery or for local resolution. This complaint should be dealt with by the CEO’s office. Do not call me about this complaint. All communication about it must be in writing.
I am making this complaint in my elected representative capacity on behalf of all evacuated residents of Dalston Lane. This complaint is additionally co-signed by residents of Dalston Lane in their own names, whose details are provided at the bottom.
Background to the complaint
On 5 June 2024, there was a devasting fire in the Dalston Lane block of the Pembury Estate. Residents of Dalston Lane and nearby properties, myself included, watched on in terror as flames tore through the block. The fire made the block uninhabitable and displaced all of the residents of the block. These residents are predominately social tenants and vulnerable people. The issues that followed from this are as follows.
The falsehoods contained in the Fire Risk Assessment
The Fire Risk Assessment (FRA) for the block, filed in July 2023, made no mention of solar panels – implying by omission that there were none – and claimed it was “not possible to access the roof space” to check for fire-resistant material. Both of these statements are false. The FRA also stated that no residents in the building had mobility, hearing, or cognition impairments, despite many having major health conditions.
Peabody have always known that all of these statements were false, and nonetheless produced or accepted this FRA.
This comes against a background of Peabody directors having had direct personal knowledge since at least 2020 that other FRAs on the Pembury Estate, in particular that covering Block D Atkins Square (11-13 Atkins Square), contained false statements that directly impact the ability to accurately assess fire safety. A recording of the meeting at which this was pointed out to Peabody directors is available on request. Relevant correspondence between the Pembury Estate Residents’ Association and senior Peabody staff, including correspondence in which senior Peabody staff refused to have the defective FRA corrected, is available on our website.
This demonstrates that the defective Dalston Lane FRA was not an isolated occurrence, and that senior Peabody staff do not care about the accuracy of FRAs in general.
Delay in investigating and disclosing the cause of the fire
The fire was over seven months ago and the report into the cause has still not been published. The lack of clarity is causing considerable concern and anxiety amongst residents affected by the fire, and those who live in blocks similar to Dalston Lane. In particular, there is a theory amongst residents that the solar panels caused the fire.
This is causing distress for residents in other building that have panels, in particular the residents of the unaffected building in Dalston Lane, and the buildings in Tolsford Road, Hindrey Road, and Shellness Road.
The London Fire Brigade (LFB) has informed us that the delay to publishing the report on the cause of the fire is, in part, because they are waiting for Peabody’s insurer to confirm a date to release evidence samples to be scientifically examined by independent experts.
Please explain:
- What is Peabody doing to work with their insurer to agree a time with the LFB?
- Why is this taking so long?
Temporary accommodation
Since the fire, some displaced residents have been placed in temporary accommodation. We have had several reports of neighbourhood managers (NMs) failing to extend the bookings on these accommodations, leaving residents in limbo as to whether they are about to be kicked out and left without anywhere to live. This has particularly been an issue when NMs have taken unexpected leave, and the responsibility for extending bookings has not been picked up elsewhere.
On 17 October 2024, I wrote to Tracey Parker alerting her to this issue. I asked that in future, residents be given confirmation at least 28 days prior to the end of their booking that their NM has extended the stay, or, in cases where a stay cannot be extended, that they are given a reasonable amount of notice and informed of new accommodation arrangements. (Reasonable would be in line with general notice given to residents when they are being removed from a residence.)
Ben Siegert (Head of Neighbourhoods – North East London) assured me that the incident “should not have happened.” I was further assured that “if a Neighbourhood Manager goes off sick or takes annual leave then their caseload is covered by their teammates, overseen by the relevant Area Manager. We also have three roaming NMs who assist teams in covering the workload of the NMs who are off. Residents will be informed that their NM is off when they call the Contact Centre, or by the NMs out of office notification if they email them.”
On Monday 6 January 2025, two different residents again made me aware that their accommodation booking had not been extended and was due to run out on 9 January 2025. In one case, the resident had had to email her NM on 30 December 2024 to request an update on her accommodation booking: she received an automated response. She did not receive any confirmation from Peabody that her accommodation had been extended until 6 January 2025, following the intervention of our MP, Meg Hiller, who contacted the CEO’s office to request the matter be dealt with.
The repeated failure to put in place appropriate governance systems for monitoring bookings and communicating bookings to residents, or of providing residents with contact details when NMs are absent, is inexcusable. This is basic business planning and the continued lack of it shows a systemic failure in Peabody’s ability to govern and manage itself.
Peabody may assert that these are “one offs”, and that these issues “should not” happen. However, the fact that the issue can occur, and has reoccurred, shows that there are systematic issues which Peabody has shown no intention of addressing. Rather than apologising for what has happened, Peabody should be ensuring that their governance systems prevent such issues ever happening in the first place.
Expenses for residents
In the immediate aftermath of the fire, displaced residents received inconsistent information regarding emergency expenses by NMs. This resulted in some residents being compensated for emergency provisions, such as purchasing changes of clothes, while others were not. This is both unfair and calls into question Peabody’s ability to communicate and follow its own policies.
Lack of support from Neighbourhood Managers
Peabody claims to have provided “dedicated” NMs to support displaced residents. In reality, residents have been assigned to NMs who are covering other neighbourhoods. This has resulted in a lack of care and support for displaced residents, as NMs have no local knowledge and there has been no allowance in the NMs’ workload to allow them time or resource to support these residents. Residents consistently complain about not being able to get in touch with their NMs, with NMs not responding to emails or phone calls. In cases where residents have managed to get in contact, different NMs have provided different information, again resulting in inconsistent support for displaced residents.
The issues to which the above background gives rise
It is entirely unjustifiable that the issues set out above are ongoing. Peabody has been aware of all of these issues for several months. As set out at the outset of this complaint, these issues show (1) the failure of appropriate governance across Peabody, leading to the unacceptable lack of support or care for these displaced residents; (2) failures by Peabody staff to follow policy or put in place any form of business continuity; (3) failures by Peabody to follow its legal obligations regarding fire safety; and (4) the continued delay in investigating and disclosing the cause of the fire.
The entirety of these matters call into question the ability of the Board to competently manage the Trust, and the fitness of Board members to act in their roles. The Board is failing in its duties to manage the Trust competently by allowing systemic failures to arise in the delivery of services to the most vulnerable of residents. If the Board has been aware of these issues then they have failed to act on them; if until now they have been unaware of these issues then they have failed to exercise effective oversight of staff. Either way, neither residents, nor regulators, should be able to have confidence in the Board’s ability to manage the Trust if it fails to address not just the specific issues raised in this complaint, but the systemic issues which underlie them.
Co-signed by [redacted]
How I would like this resolved:
- Peabody to compensate all evacuated residents of Dalston Lane £1,000 each (in addition to and without prejudice to any other compensation) for the ongoing distress and anxiety caused to them by Peabody’s failures as set out above.
- Peabody to cooperate with, and secure the cooperation of their insurer with, the LFB to investigate the cause of the fire, and to disclose the cause to residents of Dalston Lane, Tolsford Road, Hindrey Road, and Shellness Road without any delay once this is known.
- Peabody to recommit to, at least 28 days prior to the end of a resident’s temporary accommodation booking, their NM confirming that their stay is extended, or, in cases where a stay cannot be extended, that they are given a reasonable amount of notice and informed of new accommodation arrangements. (Reasonable would be in line with general notice given to residents when they are being removed from a residence.)
- Peabody to also commit in advance that, where NMs fail in this duty, it will compensate residents £500 per person for the distress and anxiety caused by the uncertainty, without the need for a further complaint.
- Peabody to investigate the systemic issues which underlie all of the failures set out in this complaint, engaging with residents directly and through the Pembury Estate Residents’ Association to ascertain the reasons for systemic issues.
- Peabody to then agree with the Pembury Estate Residents’ Association a detailed plan to ameliorate the systemic issues identified and ensure that they are not repeated.
- Peabody to disclose to all residents on the Pembury Estate as a matter of course the Fire Risk Assessments for their blocks, so that these can be checked for accuracy by residents. This does not mean providing a “summary”, such as that currently provided, which is entirely inadequate to make such judgments as it does not provide the necessary detail to assess accuracy.
Pembury Estate Residents' Association 