A meeting held by senior councillors linked to the Grenfell Tower fire was scrapped on Thursday (June 29) after journalists entered the room.

The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea leader Nicholas Paget-Brown claimed reports of the meeting in the media would “prejudice” the upcoming public inquiry.

Journalists had initially been barred from the meeting until an order from the High Court permitted them entry

In response, opposition councillor Robert Atkinson stood up in outrage and demanded Mr Paget-Brown's resignation and claimed: "You can't even organise a cabinet meeting.”

The council leader continued: “We can't have an open discussion.

“We can't have an unprejudiced discussion in this room with the public inquiry that is about to take place if journalists are recording and writing our comments.

“I'm told the press are here as a result of legal intervention, that therefore means we cannot have a discussion as we were intending to have as that would prejudice the public inquiry.

“That is the advice I have received and therefore I have to declare the meeting closed.”

As the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea's cabinet members left the room, Mr Atkinson – representative for the Notting Dale ward – admonished them.

“What you have done is used this as an opportunity for you to make a statement and nobody else gets to say anything at all,” he said.

“You could have issued that statement, in fact you should have issued that statement eight days ago.

“An absolute fiasco, that is why I am calling for your resignation.”

Residents from the neighbourhood of Grenfell Tower earlier gathered at Kensington's Town Hall, demanding entry to the building.

Mr Atkinson demanding Mr Paget-Brown's resignation follows a number of other similar calls in the wake of the fire, due to the council's handling of the aftermath.

At the meeting, the councillor himself admitted the council's reputation had been “tarnished and diminished” in the eyes of the neighbourhood.

Keep up to date with the latest news in west London via the free getwestlondon app.

You can set up your app to see all the latest news and events from your area, plus receive push notifications for breaking news.

Available to download from the App Store or Google Play for Android .