We asked locals in West London how they feel about Grenfell Tower disappearing from the London skyline.
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00:00Angela Rayner has defended her handling of a meeting with bereaved families and survivors
00:07of the Grenfell Tower fire last week, after some attendees described the meeting as a
00:12car crash. The Deputy Prime Minister told the meeting on Wednesday that the 24-storey
00:19tower would be gradually dismantled nearly eight years after a fire that killed 72 people.
00:28The decision received mixed reaction from those impacted by the tragedy, following years
00:34of debate over the tower's future. The tower here has served as a painful but powerful
00:39reminder to the importance of fire safety for close to a decade. But what do locals
00:46in West London think about Grenfell disappearing from the London skyline?
00:51My personal opinion is this, when you look at the number of people that are tied into
00:56Grenfell, the impact that it has on London, I think it's an eyesore that's going to stay
01:02there as a permanent reminder. There's no point in having the building there, take the
01:07building down, but turn it into a memorial. We've had the same thing that's happened after
01:129-11. I think the same thing should happen in London for that area because it's had such
01:18a major impact on the youth, my generation, the older generation, everybody was impacted
01:25by it. So as far as I'm concerned, yes, there's no point in maintaining something that'll
01:31fall down, but the site itself means so much to so many people that I think it should be
01:38turned into a memorial.
01:39I don't have a strong opinion on as to whether it should be taken down or not. Maybe that's
01:44something that could be put to the local community as to whether that's something the local community
01:49want to do. I think it's obviously a catastrophe and a very sad thing what has happened. So
01:55I think maybe the local community should decide on whether that should be taken down or whether
02:00something should be re-erected in its place.
02:04Spend the money to take it down so that it's no longer as dangerous and we don't have people
02:07going in there, but also you need to remember the people who fell. That's what I think.
02:12Here is what Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner had to say on the issue.
02:18And therefore making the decision was something that I spoke to the Grenfell community, including
02:22bereaved and survivors. There isn't a consensus. I don't think you ever will find that. It's
02:28devastating what happened. But what I want to try and do is work with the Grenfell community,
02:33the bereaved survivors, to make sure that we do justice to the fact that there is a
02:37sacred place. People lost their lives there and make sure that there is a lasting memorial
02:42on that site. So I felt weighing up all of the different conversations that I had and
02:48the engineering report, that actually the only way forward really was to sensitively
02:55make sure that we start taking away the tower to ground floor level.