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As the tragedy of the Grenfell Tower fire of 14 June 2017 has slowly revealed a shadowy background of outsourcing and deregulation, and a council turning a blind eye to health and safety concerns, many questions need answers. Stuart Hodkinson has those answers. Safe as Houses weaves together Stuart’s research over the last decade with residents’ groups in council regeneration projects across London to provide the first comprehensive account of how Grenfell happened and how it could easily have happened in multiple locations across the country. It draws on examples of unsafe housing either refurbished or built by private companies under the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) to show both the terrible human consequences of outsourcing and deregulation and how the PFI has enabled developers, banks and investors to profiteer from highly lucrative, taxpayer-funded contracts. The book also provides shocking testimonies of how councils and other public bodies have continuously sided with their private partners, doing everything in their power to ignore, deflect and even silence those who speak out. The book concludes that the only way to end the era of unsafe regeneration and housing provision is to end the disastrous regime of self-regulation. This means strengthening safety laws, creating new enforcement agencies independent of government and industry, and replacing PFI and similar models of outsourcing with a new model of public housing that treats the provision of shelter as ‘a social service’ democratically accountable to its residents.

Rising state expenditure threatens to outstrip the South African government's ability to pay. This danger is merely a symptom of and challenge to the predatory characteristics of the 'party-state' erected by the ruling African National Congress (ANC), notably as they are exhibited under the presidency of Jacob Zuma. The ANC government is increasingly looking to an oil and gas bonanza to avoid a 'fiscal cliff', while Zuma himself is driving a nuclear power future which threatens to bankrupt the economy. The latter strategy conforms to the party's greater disposition to corruption and patronage. Key parastatals have become headed by Zuma cronies; family and friends have been awarded government favour; and Zuma's personal interests intrude upon the governance of parastatals, the South African Revenue Service and the functioning of constitutionally protected agencies such as the office of the Public Protector. The Zuma government's repudiation of accountability highlights an official drift to secrecy. However, the increasing limitations of ANC economic policy combine with growing discontent in society to place the party's political hegemony at risk - but Zuma's presidency has compromised the ANC's capacity for internal reform.

This chapter focuses on the more sinister side of the outsourced state under PFI that was clearly present in the Grenfell disaster – the ‘accountability vacuum’. It draws on interviews with public and private sector professionals, residents involved in PFI schemes, and whistle-blowers, to illuminate specific examples of this deficit. A first section focuses on the lack of public or regulatory scrutiny of PFI contracts that reply on self-certified performance reporting, akin to paying a fox to guard the hen house. A second section explains how poorly-written contracts that set largely meaningless Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) result in minimal financial penalties despite demonstrable failings. A third section shows how local authorities’ prioritise the protection of long-term partnerships with private companies over genuine resident involvement and empowerment. A fourth section describes how resident disempowerment is compounded by the absence of both genuinely independent and powerful regulatory bodies, as well as legal routes that residents could use to get redress. It provides a number of examples of how those who did speak out were routinely ignored and sometimes actively silenced.