Grenfell Tower: Police to look into 'binned' refurbishment records

Image source, PA Media

Police will "assess whether a criminal offence may have been committed" after records relating to the Grenfell Tower refurbishment were "binned".

A project manager for the works said she threw away notebooks relating to her work almost a year after the deadly fire at the building in 2017.

At that time a public inquiry and police investigation were under way.

Claire Williams told the public inquiry she thought the information was "documented elsewhere" and not needed.

The chairman of the inquiry, which is looking into the June 2017 fire which killed 72 people, said it was hard to understand why she had "taken it upon herself" to do such a thing.

A spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Police Service said the force was "aware" of evidence presented to the inquiry about the notebooks and was waiting for the inquiry to pass it to officers.

"If relevant documentation has been disposed of or withheld from the criminal investigation, the MPS will seek to establish the facts and assess whether a criminal offence may have been committed," the spokeswoman said.

Ms Williams, who worked for Grenfell landlords the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (TMO), told the inquiry on Monday that she got rid of her records when she cleared her desk and left her job in May 2018.

She said: "There was nothing underhand about it. I was clearing my desk, I looked and decided that everything that was in there was formally represented in minutes or other paperwork and it was of little value."

She said: "It wasn't a conscious, hiding anything decision, it was 'I'm clearing my desk'. I put them in the bin."

It comes after her former colleague, Peter Maddison, disclosed several notebooks and diaries containing "material of the utmost relevance" to the inquiry only last week.

The inquiry, now in its second phase examining how the blaze could have happened in the first place, is continuing to hear evidence from Ms Williams.

The first phase concluded that cladding put on during the refurbishment fuelled the fire in June 2017 in which 72 people died.