The final report on the Grenfell fire will be published today, Wednesday 4th September, six years after the inquiry began hearing evidence about what led to the deaths of 72 people in a tower block in 2017.
The report is the result of an enquiry chaired by Sir Martin Moore-Bick, who will give a statement on its publication. The findings are expected to criticise successive governments, the building industry, manufacturers, and the London Fire Brigade. Survivors of the blaze and their relatives say that they hope to get answers, but are worried that the delay in criminal proceedings while the enquiry was carried out.
The BBC reports that there have been several key findings from the report so far:
- There was swift action taken by the resident of flat 16, where the fire began
- The first firefighters into the flat saw the fire had already spread from the kitchen to the outside – the first evidence that Grenfell’s refurbishment was contributing
- Control room supervisors appeared not to have received any specific training to manage the volume of calls
- The significance of calls from some residents was missed, including a 999 call from a resident on floor 22 who was the first to report fire penetrating her flat
- Teams on the ground struggled too, with some firefighters having received no training on how the materials used to refurbish the tower would behave in a fire
- Nobody had an overall full understanding of how to prioritise rescues
- The “stay put” strategy should have been abandoned sooner
Among the conclusions of the report are that Grenfell Tower residents were “badly let down by organisations that should have protected them”, such as Kensington and Chelsea Borough council which did not have plans in place to deal with the emergency, and London Fire Brigade which had a “chronic lack of effective leadership”, combined with an undue emphasis on process and “an attitude of complacency”.
The report also concludes that the council’s housing company (or TMO) manipulated the process of appointing an architect to carry out the refurbishment of Grenfell Tower so it could appoint its chosen firm, Studio E, which had no experience of installing cladding on high-rise buildings. None of their employees working on the project understood the building regulations or industry guidance available at the time, an the TMO failed to get a final fire safety report, which was “probably critical”.
The report also criticises “systematic dishonesty” on the part of manufacturers, and their attempts to mislead purchasers, compounded by two of the bodies that provided certificates of compliance with building regulations.
Moore-Bick added that those in Grenfell Tower were “badly failed” over a number of years in “a number of different ways” by those who were responsible for the safety of the building and its occupants. Among those, he lists the government, the tenant management organisation, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, those who manufactured and supplied the materials used in the refurbishment, those who certified their suitability for use on high-rise buildings, the architect, the principal contractor and some of its sub-contractors and the London Fire Brigade.
Regulations
London Fire Brigade (LFB) boss Andy Roe has previously told the BBC that Grenfell residents were told to “stay put for too long” during the fire which destroyed the building. The fire had been reported , but 999 call handlers working for the LFB told residents not directly affected by fire, heat or smoke to remain in their flats until help arrived. The inquiry heard that the effectiveness of the “stay put” policy in the event of fire in most high-rise buildings relies on a building being properly constructed, with regulations preventing fire spreading from one flat to another for at least 60 minutes.
This was not the case at Grenfell Tower, where as part of a refurbishment scheme carried out a year before the fire, cladding and insulation intended to improve energy efficiency had been fitted on the outside of the building. The cladding proved to be inflammable, and in less than 20 minutes, the fire climbed 19 storeys to the top of the tower, fuelled by the flammable materials on the outdise of the building.
The fire brought about a UK-wide inquiry and the commissioning of the Hackitt Report to find any other high-rise buildings with similar cladding to that used on Grenfell Tower, and to make sure people living in these homes are not at risk of a similar disaster.
ACM
Aluminium Composite Material (ACM) cladding and combustible insulation was banned in 2018 for residential buildings higher than 18m. The government has set aside funding of around £5.1 billion to remove cladding from other buildings.
However, the urgency from the public inquiry, which has been going through evidence since 2018, has since slowed down, and many residents who survived the fire are left with a number of unanswered questions, with some calling the disaster a “tragedy in three acts” on the fifth anniversary of the fire. The Building Safety Bill 2022 was one of the key introductions since the fire, and it was updated in 2024.
The question remains whether the conclusions of the Grenfell report will lead to any further changes, and whether its conclusions will point towards any criminal charges. Nineteen organisations and 58 individuals are currently under investigation over the fire, but it will be late 2026 before any criminal prosecutions could begin.
See also: Five Years on from Grenfell Fire – Has Anything Changed?
