Published: Wednesday 25 January 2023
Over the last six months we’ve heard from more than 1,000 residents who have told us where the Council should focus its services and how we can change for the better.
We have been having conversations with our communities to help us draw up plans for the future. What you have told us will be set out in our new four-year Council Plan which is due to be published in March.
As part of our Let’s Talk K&C conversation, over 500 people took part in a series of events, drop-in sessions or completed a survey to let us know where we need to focus our resources.
We are currently analysing your feedback - some of the things you told us you loved and valued about the borough are our parks and green spaces, a sense of community and diversity in the borough and that Kensington and Chelsea is generally cleaner and safer than other boroughs. Some of the challenges you told us you faced and where you’d like to see us improve were around getting better at listening to the community and acting on feedback, the availability of housing and maintaining existing housing stock, the cost of living and the need for good communication and customer service.
Once the results have been analysed they will be fed into the new four-year Council Plan which will go to Councillors to review and agree in February and March. Once finalised, the plan will be shared with our communities.
Alongside this, over 600 bereaved, survivors and residents have shared ideas and suggestions with us as part of our ‘Change at the Council – a legacy from Grenfell’ conversation, which we launched last summer. This conversation was focused on how we can use learning from the Grenfell tragedy to change for the better. We are working through the feedback in detail and will publish a full report in March.
In the meantime, we have summarised some of the main themes from what you told us.
- The two most important lessons you said the Council should learn are listening and acting and improving safety
- Fifty six per cent of survey respondents think the Council hasn’t changed since Grenfell while 44 per cent think we have changed
These themes have helped to shape the priorities in the draft Council Plan but we are also working on a focused Grenfell Legacy plan showing how we will act on your feedback to try to make change happen. Before that, we think the first step is to check with you that we have understood what we heard and ask you what you think we need to do next.
We’ll be publishing an initial analysis of the feedback later this week and will be holding some open sessions to discuss what we have heard and your residents’ views about what we should do next. Details of next steps will be shared soon at linktr.ee/grenfelllegacycomms
Cllr Elizabeth Campbell, Leader of the Council, said:
“I am grateful to every resident who has taken the time to attend an event, complete a survey or have a conversation with us about what is important. All of this is part of one big conversation providing a foundation for our plan – and it sits alongside a clear mission set by bereaved families and survivors of the Grenfell tragedy. They have told us that one legacy they want to see is for this Council to become the best Council. I accept this challenge and we will be working hard to achieve this.
“Our communities should be driving change at the Council and working with us and this is another example of how together we can become a greener, safer and fairer Council for everyone who lives here.”