GREEDY privateers exploited a legal loophole to dodge a commitment to build hundreds of social homes in Kensington and Chelsea that could have housed all survivors of the Grenfell Tower fire.

Housing charity Shelter revealed yesterday that developers had won planning permission from the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea with a promise to build affordable housing, but later backtracked, claiming that it would eat into their profits.

The tactic — known as a viability assessment — has been used by developers to avoid the council’s policy target of 50 per cent “affordable” housing (which by the government’s definition is housing available at anything up to 80 per cent of sky-high market rents).