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Post by Dan Dare on Apr 12, 2023 8:27:19 GMT
After 400 days of in-camera evidence and testimony a group of 22 firms and public bodies including Kensington Council has agreed a financial settlement with 900 claimants who had presented themselves as victims of the Grenfell tragedy. The amount of the settlement has not been disclosed, but is likely to be in the tens of millions. The claimants were represented by 14 legal firms, including many of the usual suspects: Bindmans, Bhatt Murphy, Saunders Law, Hodge Jones and Allen, Russell Cooke, Slater and Gordon, Duncan Lewis, Scott Moncrieff and Associates, Howe and Co, Hickman and Rose, Birnberg Pierce, Imran Khan and Partners, Deighton Pierce Glynn and SMQ Legal Services. The firms are collectively referred to in the process as the ’Bindman’s group’. They will also be expecting a substantial slice of the proceeds. Kerching! www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-65248544 |
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Post by Vinny on Apr 12, 2023 10:13:05 GMT
Doesn't bring the dead back.
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Post by Dan Dare on Apr 12, 2023 10:44:52 GMT
Note the compo arrangements described above are completely separate from the official inquiry, which has now concluded and is in the report-writing stage. Phase I dealt with (some of) the facts behind what happened on the night while Phase II, in which the questions of ‘why’ and 'who’s to blame’ come into focus, is where the really big numbers both in terms of lawyerly emoluments and core participant compo will come into play.
Some fun facts so far.
- Costs of the inquiry £149 million (to end of March 2022). At this rate the inquiry could beat the record for the most expensive public inquiry ever, the Bloody Sunday inquiry (£195 million)
- The inquiry has recognised 585 'BSR' bereaved, survivors and residents as ‘core participants’, each of whom are entitled to legal representation paid for out of public funds. To date £61 million has been spent on legal aid for BSR participants, around £100,000 each.
- Five KCs, 8 JCs and 91 ‘other fee earners’ are representing core participants.
- Around 15% of the 600-odd core participants have Anglo-Celtic surnames, although a number of these are of Afro-Caribbean origin. The majority of the participants have Arab, African or Hispanic surnames. This tallies reasonably with surname distribution amongst the 72 victims: 20% Anglo-Celt (half Afro-Cab), 67% Arab and 13% Hispanic and other.
Kerching!
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Post by steppenwolf on Apr 13, 2023 6:47:52 GMT
How come there are 900 claimants when only 72 died? This one is going to run and run like Hillsborough. The survivors are going to make as much out of it as they can - all courtesy of legal aid - and demand people are locked up etc. I think the only people who are to blame are the people who lived there. The tower was massively over-occupied because of breaches of tenancy agreements and was an accident waiting to happen.
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Post by Dan Dare on Apr 13, 2023 7:07:13 GMT
The numbers of claimants clambering on the compo bandwagon is just one of the aspects of this saga that neither the public inquiry nor the legacy media wish to examine in too much detail.
Another is the discrepancy between the number of dwellings that were destroyed (138) and the number of households that have been provided with new properties (201). It seems that nobody in authority or the opinion-forming class care to look too closely into such matters even though the Council spent over £230 million in acquiring these properties.
The Council alone will have spent over £500 million on 'Grenfell support' by the time it's finished.
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Post by steppenwolf on Apr 13, 2023 7:39:08 GMT
The main thing the Council were to blame for is not managing the flats properly. They should have inspected the flats regularly and evicted all those who had no right to be there - everybody knew what was going on. One of the reasons that there were regular electrical fires is because the circuits were overloaded. The trouble is everybody's frightened of telling these people a few home truths. Obviously they won't like it but that's tough.
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