The final report of the Grenfell Inquiry has revealed that the government and private sector’s failure led to the 2017 fire at Grenfell Tower in London becoming a death trap for 72 people. The report was published after a six-year public inquiry into the incident. The cladding, which was found to be the “principal” reason for the fire’s rapid spread, was the key issue in the report.
The report by Sir Martin Moore-Bick, a retired High Court judge, highlights that the experts alerted the government about cladding fires in 1992 after a fire at Knowsley Heights tower caught alight in Huyton, Merseyside. The flammable cladding was never banned because it had already been classified as meeting a British safety standard. Safety tests in 2001 revealed that the cladding of concern “burned violently”. However, the results were kept confidential, and the government did not tighten any rules.
The coalition government headed by David Cameron in 2010 ignored the risks. The inquiry found that the then housing department was “poorly run”, and fire safety had been left in the hands of a relatively junior official. The Building Research Establishment (BRE), which is the government’s expert advisor, was privatised in 1997. But the inquiry found that privatisation of BRE exposed it to “unscrupulous product manufacturers.”
The inquiry shows that the way building safety is managed in England and Wales is “seriously defective” and recommends a single regulator answerable to a government minister to ensure accountability. The cause of the Grenfell disaster was the product of “decades of failure,” which resulted in breakdowns in trust and relations between the Tenant Management Organisation (TMO) and residents. The TMO showed a “persistent indifference” to fire safety and the needs of vulnerable residents.
The London Fire Brigade failed to prepare their teams and lacked the skills to recognise the problems and take actions to control the situation. Senior officers had been complacent, and there was a failure to share knowledge about cladding fires or to plan for a large number of 999 calls. The Grenfell Inquiry report calls for prompt and swift actions against the defects to prevent such incidents from happening in the future
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