London: Smoke billows from high rise flats opposite Grenfell

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Since January last year, Rosena Allin-Khan received three large donations from Henley Homes. These donations include £5,000 for her failed bid to be deputy leader of the Opposition party.

According to Electoral Commission records, Dr Allin-Khan, the shadow mental health minister, received two donations of £5,000 from the property developer.

A further £10,199.56 was donated in January this year and was registered for being for 44 laptops for primary schools across the Tooting constituency.

A spokesperson for the MP said: “All donations are transparently and properly declared and published in line with the rules of the Electoral Commission.”

Dr Allin-Khan was shamed for accepting the donations from the company after previously taking aim at firms who failed to deal with flammable cladding.

She tweeted in February: “It’s been three years since the Grenfell tragedy and still people are living in blocks with flammable cladding.

“Many are unable to sleep at night and many are worried the cost of remedial works will send up at their door.”

Tory MP Peter Gibson said people would “understandably think this is the heigh of hypocrisy from Labour”.

Henley Homes was among 10 firms responsible for cladding remediation works who had failed to being as recently as June.

Ministers have started to name and shame building owners who are responsible for the remediation of unsafe cladding if the work has not been begun on least one of their properties.

A spokesperson for the company said the developer was no longer named on the Government list “due to the significant progress with the remediation works on the development in Luton”.

They added the developer had an “ongoing commitment to supporting education and the laptops were just one of a series of donations from the developer’s charitable arm, BCBN, which has raised £1.5m to date for local and national community projects”.

The spokesperson told the MailOnline: “We want to make abundantly clear that we have no objections to children playing on the development and welcome children to play in the communal areas that we have created in line with planning.”

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Following the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017, fire-safety improvements have been required.

As the fire broke out, residents were told to stay in their flats by firefighters and 999 operators for nearly two hours.

It is believed that up to 55 of the 72 victims who died were prevented from escaping because of the “stay put” strategy, which was rescinded at 2.47am – two hours after the fire broke out.

In an official report, which followed a two-year investigation, it found a full evacuation should have been implemented at least an hour before the order was given.

Sir Martin Moore-Bick, the retired high court judge who chaired the public inquiry, said in his report that the decision to rescind the policy should have been made “between 1.30am and 1.50am and would likely to have resulted in fewer fatalities”.

He concluded: “I have little doubt that fewer people would have died if the order to evacuate had been given by 2am.”

Sir Martin praised the “extraordinary courage and selfless devotion to duty” of individual firefighters who “responded with great courage and dedication in the most harrowing of circumstances”.

After the tragedy, the Housing Ministry made £200m available for aluminium composite material to be removed from some 170 privately-owned towers across the UK to make them safe.

In February this year, ministers were warned that property leaseholders will “not forget and not forgive” if they are made to pay for fire safety works on cladding.

Tory MP Royston Smith also told the Commons that after the Grenfell Tower disaster: “This part of the housing market is heading for collapse and thousands of leaseholders are heading for bankruptcy.

“This Government could and should prevent this happening.”

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