EIGHT long and painful years since the Grenfell Tower Fire, here we are once again reflecting on what has and has not been achieved that would prevent Grenfell 2. For many of us, this is just sickening.

We have a new government, “Labour” in name at least. There have, of course, been changes made. But changes do not always mean progress.

So yes, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, “the Grenfell Council,” has written some heartfelt and finely calibrated statements, press releases, held public meetings, consultations and published policies. But genuine change? Ask anyone in North Ken — No. After tens of millions of pounds spent, people are still suffering without the support they need; they still don’t get it.

Ask residents of Lancaster West, the estate of which the Tower is a part, how their refurb is going. Ask residents of the year-old Kelso Cochrane House, council built on council land — just read the PRs! But it leaks. The leccie is dodgy. There is damp, mould and the lifts break down. So this “award-winning exciting new build” is actually potentially dangerous.

This really doesn’t bode well for the extraordinarily “generous” spending review announcements of Wednesday June 11. If the council so desperate to be seen to have improved, with the world watching, a council under investigation for corporate manslaughter — if they can’t get it right, what hope for this juggernaut of spending on affordable and social housing announced this week?

Frankly if the Labour government, with this huge budget (though we’re still checking the small print) can’t fix the housing crisis, what hope for any government, ever?

Specific issues I’m watching out for:

• Improved planning, building and fire safety legislation you can’t wriggle out of;
• Improved compliance standards with independent regulators;
• Improved and robust enforcement — and not when it’s too late, we need properly resourced and well-trained building control teams.

Sadly the Brexit cock-ups mean that it is virtually impossible at present to regulate the safety/non-flammability of building materials — two-thirds of which come from Europe.

The fire testing and certification system, privatised under the Tories, is woefully under-resourced and there just isn’t capacity in Britain to carry out enough rigorous tests. So manufacturers go to Europe for testing where the standards are different.

Building safety regulations, though improved, mean new development applications must quite rightly be signed off by the regulators, but they are so overstretched that there are delays of a year plus for sign-off.

The construction industry tells us that within three years we will be short of 250,000 skilled workers, and given that we can no longer borrow them from eastern Europe, where on Earth will we find them? The Chancellor has cut funding for Level 7 apprenticeships for over-22-year-olds, so we can’t even train our own. The huge transport infrastructure programme announced before the spending review rang alarm bells in the industry; the housing sector will be tearing their hair out now, with funding available but a severe and growing shortage of labour, and the cost of materials still rising.

And all that without, at first reading, much respite for the hundreds of thousands of leaseholders stuck in worthless flats, terrified that disaster will strike before remediation is carried out — most likely at their own cost.

So, do “they” get it? On a day when a group of leaseholders in the Prime Minister’s constituency contacted me in despair at his lack of interest in their plight, in a new housing block with numerous fire and building safety problems, that has to be another big fat No.

This huge and somewhat incontinent £39 billion for “affordable and social housing” — once we’ve analysed it in full — does signal that the government recognises that spending on housing for low and middle-income households is an investment and not a cost.

But there are over 17,000 affordable housing (S106) units sitting empty, as housing associations just can’t afford to buy them to let out at “affordable” rents. So sadly, some of the £39bn “windfall” will indeed go straight into the pockets of private developers who created the overvaluation in the first place.

With so much still in disarray, after years of deregulation coupled with disdain for social tenants, quite simply, we need a total restructuring of housing finance and management. Money is not enough.