THE DEAL
The fire that destroyed Grenfell Tower killed 72 people in their homes.
Now a £150 million compensation deal has left those close to the tragedy with the question: how much is a life worth?
Grieving family members, local residents and a survivor have told The News Movement they felt pressured into signing the deal and are upset with the terms.
One said the process left them feeling the dead were “worth nothing”.
Over 900 of those affected by the blaze that tore through Grenfell in June 2017 will share the money after their lawyers reached an agreement with those involved in the disastrous refurbishment of the tower.
The agreement does not include an admission of any wrongdoing.
Members of the group that made the compensation claim say they felt pressured into signing the deal, misled by their lawyers and were left powerless to challenge its terms.
A source close to the victims told us: “It’s like a bit of money to shut us up. It’s an insult - this money.
“It [has] made me feel that the families that were lost are worth nothing. We’ve been let down by the solicitors that we gave consent to negotiate for us.
“[I’m] very upset, like everybody else. This is not justice, this is just them [the defendants] trying to close their case, to close the matter.”
Speaking on condition of anonymity, Grenfell claimants told TNM:
- The total sum devalued the victims’ lives and was “pathetic”. Sources labelled it an insult.
- In some cases they believe lawyers lied to them, wrongly saying they were the only ones who had not signed up.
- A three-week initial deadline to sign, set in late November last year, was insufficient after six years of dealing with the fallout of the tragedy.
- A meeting to discuss the terms before the deadline was “a waste of time” because the deal “was done”.
The wall around the site is covered in tributes
PUTTING A PRICE ON A LIFE
The £150 million figure, which experts say should include damages for the pain and suffering of the victims and financial losses including future earnings, can now be publicly scrutinised for the first time. The final sum paid out will be smaller as not everyone has signed up.
The figure will be paid by a group of more than 20 companies and authorities which includes Kingspan insulation, (worth £8.6 billion) and Arconic, the firm that made the cladding and has a market value of £2 billion.
The defendants in the case - some of whom have insisted they are not defending the botched refurbishment that wrapped the tower in flammable material - also include the Home Office, the Department for Housing and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, the UK’s wealthiest council.
A public inquiry which heard the organisations accused of a “merry-go-round of buck passing” - was told in November that every one of the 72 deaths was avoidable. The deal does not affect the public inquiry or the active police investigation into the fire.
THE AMOUNT “IS VERY SMALL…FAMILIES WERE BASICALLY MURDERED”.
“We’ve always known from the day it happened, there would be compensation,” explained a source close to the victims, who asked not to be named.
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The compensation claim alleged that the 23 defendants “separately and cumulatively led to or contributed to the disaster”.
The Grenfell compensation case took the alternative dispute resolution, or ADR, route almost two years ago.
This course of action aims to speed up the process, particularly in complex cases with hundreds of people and multiple organisations involved.
Claimants were given a document detailing the terms of the compensation deal in November 2022.
The terms of the settlement include the £150 million compensation sum, no admission of liability by the defendants and a ban on claimants from making any further claims in the UK or abroad - which are common terms in compensation agreements like this.
“I expected better,” explained a source, who has expressed concerns with how the compensation will be shared. A decision on final payments is not yet complete.
“I was not happy at all because it did not reflect what I was hoping to see.
“I think [the sum] is very small compared to what the family have lost because families were basically murdered. It wasn’t like an accident. It was, so many people to blame for it, it should have been much bigger.”
A local resident said: “I thought [the compensation sum] was pathetic really, considering what they’ve been through.”
TNM can reveal the compensation deal also includes the creation of what is being called Testimony Week.
The purpose of the week - which will be paid for by the defendants up to a limit of £2.5 million - is for claimants who have accepted the offer to share their experiences of the fire and to provide an opportunity for the ADR defendants to respond.
The claimants and defendants involved in the settlement can decide how and whether to participate in the week.
“I find that kind of crazy, some people are not happy to speak to the people that killed their families or they might not want to talk to the corporates… it’s not fair on us, the victims,” a source said.
The week will begin just nine days before the 6th anniversary of the tragedy.
The source added: “All of it, [there] hasn’t been no consideration. There hasn’t been no negotiation, all totally unfair.”
Families searched for loved ones in the days after the fire
“WE’VE BEEN LET DOWN”
The bereaved, survivors and residents (referred to in the process as BSRs) said they received the deal in November and some were given as little as 3 weeks to make a decision on whether they agreed or face being dropped as a client from their law firm.
The final deadline for a response was in early January. At least 85% of claimants had to agree for the ADR settlement to go ahead.
“I opened and read the letter, but to go through the whole document, even the letter outlining it, was just so complicated - it was mind blowing, I didn’t understand,” a local resident said.
“We didn’t have enough time to digest what was really going on.”
A source close to the victims explained: “[In] just about two/three weeks roughly, you had to decide - not enough time for consultation, not enough time to have a joint meeting with everybody or plan and question it with the decision makers who did the deal.
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“It should have definitely been longer. In fact… this shouldn’t have been the final draft. This should’ve been where we look at it, cross examine it and say ‘yeah, we would like to make some changes here’, but we was in the final draft.”
The claimants said they did receive advice and have meetings with their solicitors but it was not entirely helpful.
“Because they’re lawyers…they were speaking in lawyer’s terms …It was so much and you just think, I’ve had enough,” said a local resident.
“You can’t hold an interest because it’s so much information… you don’t understand because it’s not in a way that you understand. It could be made easier in words that we would understand.”
A source said it was a “long” and “exhausting” process to organise a joint meeting with the solicitors and mediators before the deadline.
“[The meeting] did not go well. It was a waste of time, it was like a show that they had to do for us… it was just a waste of time because it doesn’t matter what we said. That’s it, basically, the decision has been made. It was not going to change and nothing was going to be done about it,” they said.
“You have no choice basically. Even when we asked for change, it was blatantly refused and denied.”
A local resident also said their concerns were “dismissed”.
The Grenfell claimants describe how they felt increasing pressure over the Christmas period to sign up to the agreement.
A source close to the victims said: “The solicitors lied to their clients by saying ‘You’re the only one who hasn’t signed.’ They also said they was working over Christmas to get the clients to join. I don’t think it’s a very fair way of doing it and how it was done.”
A local resident added: “That was the thing that was repeated to people over and over again: ‘If you don’t sign this, you get nothing at all’... I was told that and I know other people were told that as well.”
For some Grenfell claimants, they felt that they did not have a choice but to sign the agreement.
A source said: “The majority of people that have signed up to it, have signed up to the fact of having nowhere to go, no second choice, no option.”
A local resident added: “I can see why a lot of people didn’t feel they had a choice. If the pressure they attempted to put me under was typical of what they did to people, I can see why loads of people caved. I’m yet to find anyone in the area who is happy with it.”
THESE DEALS ARE ALWAYS DIFFICULT
David Greene, a lawyer who specialises in class action litigation, said that although effective, ADRs come with difficulties.
He said that lawyers are tasked with bringing their clients a deal to either accept or reject and there is limited room to renegotiate the money or the terms, though there is usually scope for amendments.
Mr Greene, of Edwin Coe LLP, who did not have clients in this case, added that the resolutions like these “converts death, pain and suffering into money as though it is the value of those personal events”.
TNM contacted the 14 law firms that represented the 900 claimants, who referred back to a statement released this week confirming a settlement had been reached but declined to comment on concerns raised in this article.
“It should be recognised that no amount of damages could ever be sufficient to properly compensate those affected by the fire,” the statement read.
The firms added the families’ fight for justice continues through the public inquiry, which will be followed by a Crown Prosecution Service decision over a corporate manslaughter investigation by the Met police.