‘Grim and unsurprising': Grenfell deaths ‘all avoidable’, says inquiry

The Grenfell report, which found that successive governments ignored the fire safety risk of cladding for decades, has been published seven years after the deadly blaze at Grenfell Tower in 2017.

Read time: 5 minutes

In brief…

• The Grenfell Inquiry has published the final report pinpointing who was to blame for the devastating blaze in the summer of 2017.
• The damning findings have identified a range of culprits, from central and local governments to cladding companies and the London Fire Brigade.
• The News Agents say the findings are a stark reminder of the indifference from those responsible, noting that deaths would never have happened if the residents of Grenfell’s voices were listened to.

What’s the story?

On 14 June 2017, a small kitchen fire in Grenfell Tower, a 24-storey, 200ft block with 129 flats, triggered the worst residential disaster in Britain since World War II.

Now, the final report attributing the blame for the disaster that killed 72 people has been published after seven years of unanswered questions from the grieving families demanding justice.

The 1,694-page report, led by Grenfell Inquiry Chair Sir Martin Moore-Bick, found that the government was “well aware” of the risks of cladding -  the material pinpointed as the “principle” reason for the rapid spread of the blaze -  a year before the deadly event occurred.

In fact, it found that successive governments were responsible for “decades of failure” to act on the potential dangers of cladding.

Construction and cladding firms who sold products responsible for the fire’s spread have also been accused of “systematic dishonesty”, prioritising “greed and profiteering” over health and safety.

Sir Martin Moore-Bick said: “The simple truth is that the deaths that occurred were all avoidable and that those who lived in the tower were badly failed over a number of years and in a number of different ways by those who were responsible for ensuring the safety of the building and its occupants.”

A total of nineteen organisations and 58 individuals are under investigation over the fire, but criminal prosecutions will not begin until 2026.

Just hours after the report dropped, firefighters rushed to tackle a blaze at a high-rise tower block in Catford, south London.

It comes just weeks after a fire in a tower block in Dagenham, east London, was thought to have spread from building materials kept on the scaffolding.

The News Agents on reporting on Grenfell as it happened

The key findings

• Successive governments had 26 years to identify the risks posed by combustible cladding, dating back to a 1991 fire at a tower block in Merseyside.
• While the state had “many opportunities” to identify the risks, it was not until 2016 that it became “well aware of those risks”, but “failed to act on what it knew".
• A list of companies that made and sold panels and insulation products "engaged in deliberate and sustained strategies to manipulate the testing processes, misrepresent test data and mislead the market".
• The Tenant Management Organisation (TMO), which ran services at Grenfell Tower, “failed to take sufficient care in its choice of architect and paid insufficient attention to matters affecting fire safety”.
• The TMO was also seen as an “uncaring and bullying overlord that belittled and marginalised” its tenants.
• There was a “serious lack of competence” and in some cases “outright dishonesty” during the tower’s 2015-2016 refurbishment.
• The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea’s building control department “failed to perform its statutory function of ensuring that the design of the refurbishment complied with the Building Regulations.”
• It “therefore bears considerable responsibility for the dangerous condition of the building immediately on completion of the work”.
• The London Fire Brigade had a “chronic lack of effective leadership” and an “undue emphasis on process and a culture of complacency”.

The News Agents take

“The reading of this report is both grim and in some ways unsurprising”, Emily Maitlis says.

Tragically, we have learnt that the 72 deaths that came from that night could have been avoided.

“If things had been done differently, if it hadn't been for incompetence, if it hadn't been for dishonesty and greed, then those people could still be alive today”, she says.

Lewis Goodall says that seeing this laid out so starkly is a reminder of the “crucial asymmetry of power there was between the people in that tower” and those responsible.

But the people who it affected were just ignored because they didn't have any power to prosecute, he says.

Lewis adds: “The report outlines indifference and incompetence or fecklessness, despite the fact that repeatedly, warnings were made, or people complained within the tower about safety standards and nothing was done”.

Emliy questions why this attitude was allowed to persist for so long.

“For the residents, this was not news. They knew about this before the fire happened. They had been trying to raise the alarm before it happened, and now the rest of the world is catching up”, she says.

Emily notes how Theresa May, who initially launched the inquiry when she was prime minister seven years ago, pledged to get to the bottom of who was to blame so swift justice could be served.

But she says: “We've had four prime ministers since then. We have had fires. We had a fire last month in Dagenham.

“We've got a fire going on now, as we speak, in another high rise block. So you do have to say, ‘at what point does the priority of things that people actually warned about become too big to ignore?”

Listen to the full discussion on The News Agents.

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