Grenfell response: Chalcots Estate resident angrily confronts Camden Council leader over evacuation

An angry resident has confronted the Leader of Camden Council over its decision to evacuate her from her home in the Chalcots Estate and rehouse her in a bed and breakfast with her four small children.

Farah Ikran said she has being staying at a B&B with her family in Wembley since the council announced the four towers of the estate were being evacuated, after fire safety tests revealed they were covered in flammable cladding and had numerous internal issues.

She challenged council leader Georgia Gould over where she had been housed, saying she could not feed her children without a fridge or a cooker.

She said she was worried about her children returning to school on Monday as they were distressed by the upheaval and had not been able to eat properly.

Ms Gould attempted to reassure her that she understood what she was saying and made sure she had registered with the council for help.

The blocks are four of 60 so far which have been found to have the flammable cladding similar to that feared to have played a key role in spreading the flames at Grenfell Tower in Kensington last week.

Some 200 residents of the block were refusing to leave on Saturday evening as many said they would not sleep on an air mattresses in the leisure centre when they could stay in their own home.

Ms Ikran was one of the few who were able to be taken to a hotel but she said she cannot stay there without being able to feed her children – regardless of the £100 food and expenses allowance which has been allocated to each displaced family.

She told The Independent: "They are doing nothing. They are saying you get £100 but we don’t need money. We need a place for our kids.

"Money is nothing to us, even if she gives us £10,000, it is nothing."

She said she was originally told she would be staying there for just one night but has now been told she may have to stay for two weeks.

She said: "I am not going to stay for 14 nights.I have a child, one-year-old, she is not eating takeaway. Why are they kicking us out of our houses? Why are they kicking out kids?

"They are the ones who created this problem. They need to solve it, they need to open up their houses. They have houses. They have a hundred empty properties they are getting ready now and they are not doing anything."

Speaking to reporters outside the leisure centre on Sunday, Ms Gould said she was going to personally go knock on doors in the estate to persuade people to leave.

She said they have more hotel spaces and 100 flats of their own properties on Maiden Lane which they have just built, becoming available for residents on Monday.

"We hope to get many people into more secure accommodation as quickly as we can," she said.

"The priority is to make sure that the people in those blocks have somewhere that they can directly go to and making sure that they are safe."

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has backed the council's decision to evacuate the tower blocks.

"I think they've done the right thing. Look, you've got to err on the side of caution. You can't play Russian roulette with people's safety," he told Sky News.