A SENIOR councillor has criticised Bradford Council’s plans to issue high-visibility tabards to its members as a ‘lesson learned’ from the Grenfell Tower tragedy in London.

Police revealed that around 255 people managed to escape last month’s inferno, but officers say around 80 people are dead or missing.

In the wake of the disaster, councils and housing companies across the country have been forced to review fire safety.

Earlier this week, Bradford councillors received an email from the Council’s emergency management team, which said it was looking to provide high-vis tabards, which say ‘councillor’ on the front and back, “as part of learning from the tragedy at Grenfell Tower”.

The email said this was so councillors would be easily recognisable at the scene of an emergency.

Councillor Jeanette Sunderland, leader of the Liberal Democrat group on Bradford Council, said there is a “real mix of emotions” surrounding the issue. “Some communities still don’t have a plan for what happens if it floods,” she said.

“The Council are saying ‘what we really need to do is give councillors a high-vis jacket’.

“It seems such a long way down the list of things to do. For me, let’s start the discussion ‘what is the role of councillors in emergencies?’ When we have decided that, then we inform councillors properly of what their role is and then we give them the stamp of authority.”

Cllr Sunderland said she thought it was “far down” the list of what the Council should be spending money on and that it was not “serving the people well”.

Council leader Susan Hinchliffe said she called a meeting of executive and senior officers to learn lessons about how the local authority would react in the face of a disaster like Grenfell. She added that additional training for officers was asked for, along with further scenario testing and a review of the suitability and location of rest centres.

“One of the other issues that came to light was the fact that in an emergency councillors need to be more visible so that the public can quickly identify us and ask us for assistance,” Cllr Hinchliffe said. “If we wear high-vis tabards, that is a good way of making us easily identifiable, especially in a crisis situation when people are distressed. Depending on the scale of the incident, councillors might be asked to go anywhere in the district to help and therefore may not be in their own community.”

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