Hulme told Disability News Service this week: “An evacuation plan is not a big ask and the fact that the Home Office is blocking this is an outrageous act of discrimination. Instead, it is consulting on its own “alternative package” of measures, which it calls Emergency Evacuation Information Sharing, which does not go as far as PEEPs and which will only apply to the minority of buildings that have been assessed as being “at higher risk”. Last month, the Home Office said its decision was taken on the grounds of “practicality”, “proportionality” and “safety”.

National guidance in place at the time of the fire stated that it was “usually unrealistic” to expect landlords to put in place arrangements for disabled people to evacuate blocks of flats in an emergency.Ĭladdag’s legal challenge, through solicitors Bhatt Murphy, centres on the Home Office decision to reject the inquiry’s recommendation that all owners and managers of high-rise residential buildings should be legally required to prepare a personal emergency evacuation plan (PEEP) for all residents who may find it difficult to “self-evacuate”. This followed years of failure to plan for how disabled people living in Grenfell would evacuate if they needed to. The fire led to 72 people losing their lives, including 15 of Grenfell’s 37 disabled residents, on the night of 14 June 2017. The letter, which is seeking key government documents and information and is likely to be followed by a claim for a judicial review of the Home Office decision, came as survivors and relatives of those who lost their lives this week marked five years since the Grenfell disaster. Georgie Hulme and Sarah Rennie, co-founders of Claddag, have told the Home Office in a legal letter of the “upset, outrage and betrayal” felt by disabled people and those who survived Grenfell and lost family in the fire. Two campaigners have launched a legal challenge over the Home Office decision to reject a key recommendation from the Grenfell Tower Inquiry that would have ensured they and other disabled residents could safely evacuate blocks of flats.

Evac by Michael Murphy