Officers from Kensington and Chelsea Council described the area near Grenfell Tower as “little Africa” and “full of people from the Tropics”, an MP has claimed.
Labour MP Emma Dent Coad used a Commons debate on the devastating fire to make the shocking accusations of racism about staff at the Tory-led local authority.
Dent Coad, whose constituency includes the site, said the attitude from the Kensington and Chelsea Council following the fire was either “racism or snobbery, take your pick”.
Earlier she told MPs: “A senior council officer was told to go down to the site but refused. He said ‘it’s like little Africa down there’.
“Another said ‘the area was full of people from the Tropics’.
“A senior officer regularly in front of others referred to my neighbours as ‘mussies’.
June 14 will mark two years since the blaze in North Kensington which claimed the lives of 72 people.
Councillor Elizabeth Campbell, leader of Kensington and Chelsea Council, said she would investigate the claims and would be writing to the MP immediately.
Dent Coad, who is also a councillor for the London borough, added: “This attitude is hardly surprising.
“A senior councillor about two years ago during a debate on refugee children said during his speech ‘if we let these people in we will have an Islamic caliphate in Kensington and Chelsea’.”
She also said she is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following the fire.
“As someone myself suffering from PTSD, but able to function and I know so many who cannot, I will on their behalf wear the scars of my own mental ill-health with pride,” Dent Coad said.
Earlier she said: “We have 11,000 people affected to varying degrees by the Grenfell atrocity in our neighbourhood. Some have been helped (by mental health services) but many have not.
“The type of trauma we have does not go away. There have been several suicides and while it is often difficult to ascertain causes the people that I know of, five, who have lost their lives in the past seven months were affected to varying degrees by what happened.”
An independent inquiry into the fire, led by Judge Sir Martin Moore-Bick, was launched in the aftermath.
Its first report into what happened, which was due this spring, will not be published until October.
Cheaper, more combustible cladding, which the council opted for, is thought to have been a key factor in the fire spreading so quickly.
Councillor Campbell said: “If these claims can be substantiated we will of course investigate them urgently, but I hope Emma would have reported them at the time as both a local councillor and MP. I will be writing to her directly to find out the details of the cases she outlined in the House of Commons.
“We have been working hard to make the properties we bought for the bereaved, survivors and their families into places they can call home, working with them to do so in incredibly complex circumstances.”
She added: “Council staff have never stopped caring and never stopped working, and this will continue to be the case when every family is in their new home and starting to rebuild their lives, and we are working with our colleagues in the NHS who will be crucial for this long-term effort.”