‘Extremely upset’ Angela Rayner responds after Grenfell Tower households model her ‘aggressive’

Angela Rayner has vowed to make the Grenfell Tower site a “sacred place” for bereaved families and survivors after confirming the building would be dismantled.

The Deputy PM said she would be “sincerely upset” if the community felt she did not handle the situation sensitively. Appearing on BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg show on Sunday, Ms Rayner was challenged over claims a meeting with bereaved families last week was a “car crash” and that a survivor suggested she was “defensive, even aggressive”.

The Cabinet minister said: “Well, I certainly don’t feel like I was aggressive, and if anyone felt that way, then I would be sincerely upset about that. I think what I tried to do is take a really difficult meeting and explain to people, and make sure that those that were bereaved had that information, and the survivors had that information before the decision was made public.”

She added: “Now I know that some people in that room felt that they hadn’t been given the opportunity before then. I listened to what they said and my conclusion was still that there was, there is not a possibility, really, for that tower to remain as it is going into the future. And I tried to deliver that message as sensitively as I possibly could, knowing full well that it was going to be really upsetting for people to hear that.”

Ms Rayner, who is also the Housing Secretary, added: “What I want to try and do is work with the Grenfell community, the bereaved survivors, to make sure that we do justice to the fact that there is a sacred place, people lost their lives there, and make sure that there is a lasting memorial on that site.”

An inquiry into the 2017 fire, which killed 72 people, found the tragedy was caused by “decades of failure” by those in power – from the government to cladding and construction firms. During the interview, Ms Rayner said more than 2,000 buildings with dangerous cladding have not had work started to fix it. She said she had told housing companies the pace of remediating buildings was “unacceptable” but admitted a deadline for the flammable cladding to be removed was not until 2029.

On Friday Ms Rayner confirmed the 24-storey west London tower block “will be carefully taken down to the ground” after years of uncertainty over its future – in a decision that sparked mixed reactions from the Grenfell community.

Some bereaved families reacted with fury over the plan, saying the decision to demolish the block feels like “taking away our gravestone”. Others said they understood there were safety concerns about the tower staying up. Some said the building should be brought partly down – such as to the tenth floor – so part of it would be retained as a “standing memorial”.

Grenfell United raised concerns that bereaved families and survivors had not been properly consulted. In a meeting with families earlier this week, they said Ms Rayner “refused to confirm how many bereaved and survivors had been spoken to in the recent, short four week consultation”. They said: “Ignoring the voices of bereaved on the future of our loved one’s gravesite is disgraceful and unforgivable”

Grenfell Next of Kin acknowledged that the decision taken by Ms Rayner “must have been difficult” and admitted the building cannot be “propped up indefinitely due to safety concerns” over the structure. The group said a discussion needs to be had about what will go in the tower block’s place to memorialise their loved ones. “We need to rebuild our broken shattered lives and out families. And we need to remember Grenfell where out kin died in the most horrific unimaginable way not with patronising pandering and performative responses but with respectful conversations because that is the only way we can get through this.”

In the months leading to the decision, Ms Rayner engaged with independent experts as well as families. Engineers said the tower is “significantly damaged” and said, even with additional props installed, the condition of the building would “continue to worsen over time”. They also advised it is not “practicable” to retain many of the floors as part of a memorial “that must last in perpetuity”.