The Grenfell Tower Inquiry: Key Findings & What’s Next?

Written by Alice Forsyth

Background

The incident

On 14 June 2017, a fire broke out in the Grenfell Tower in North Kensington, West London. The tower block was 24-stories high and held 120 flats. The fire started by an electrical fault in a refrigerator on the 4th floor. It rapidly spread through the combustible cladding system and reached the 24th floor within 30 minutes.

More than 250 London Fire Brigade firefighters and 70 fire engines from stations across Greater London attended the incident. Despite their efforts, the fire continued to burn for over 60 hours.

72 people died in the tragedy; 70 at the scene and 2 subsequently in hospital. A further 70 people were injured. 223 people escaped the blaze.

This was the deadliest structural fire in the UK since the 1988 Piper Alpha oil-platform disaster and the worst UK residential fire since the Blitz of World War II.

The inquiry and initial findings

The Grenfell Tower Inquiry began on 14 September 2017 to investigate the causes of the fire and other related issues.

The first report, released in October 2019, affirmed that the building’s exterior and it’s cladding did not comply with regulations and was the principal reason why the fire spread, and that the fire service was too late in advising residents to evacuate.

After the release of the first report, a second phase began to investigate the broader causes of the fire. This was published last week, and you can read it in full here.

The Inquiry – Final Report

The final report was published on 4 September 2024 after a total of almost 7 years of extensive hearings and investigations.

The Inquiry found that a chain of failures and ignorance across several construction companies, the landlord, and the national government “led to Grenfell Tower becoming a death trap”.

The construction companies

As was found in the first report of the inquiry, the final report affirmed that the cladding materials used and insulation in the walls proved to be highly flammable and were a principal cause of the fire. The companies which supplied insulation and cladding materials to the Tower were Arconic, Celotex, Kingspan.

The final report found that these three companies had engaged in “deliberate and sustained strategies to manipulate the testing processes, misrepresent test data and mislead the market"

Arconic is a multibillion-dollar US company that made the combustible cladding panels on the outside of the Tower. The Inquiry found that most senior figures at Arconic knew that the cladding used in Grenfell was highly flammable and did not meet safety standards. But, instead of issuing warnings or withdrawing it from the market, the company was deemed “determined to exploit what it saw as weak regulatory regimes in certain counties, including the UK”.

Celotex made most of the insulation used within the Tower. However, under the looming pressure from its competitor, Kingspan, it was found that their insulation product was not safe to use, even though they knowingly sold it as so.

Kingspan made roughly 5% of the combustible foam insulation used within the Tower. The Inquiry found that it knowingly made untrue claims about the insulation’s ability to withstand fire. Representatives from the company were hostile at times throughout the inquiry hearings. For instance, when questions were raised about the safety of the insulation, a senior manager said that critics could “go f** themselves*”!

The landlord

The Grenfell Tower was owned by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, but day-to-day running of the building was administered by the tenant management organisation (TMO) on their behalf.

The Inquiry found that the relationship between the TMO and residents in the Tower was a toxic one – Residents regarded the TMO as “an uncaring and bullying overlord that belittled and marginalised them”. The Inquiry found that the TMO consistently ignored residents’ views and was often very defensive when it came to criticism of the way the Tower was run.

The TMO failed to meet basic obligations on fire safety, particularly when it came to the vulnerable and disabled residents. The Inquiry went as far as to conclude that they “treated the demands of managing fire safety as an inconvenience”. Because of their ignorance, about 40% of the building’s vulnerable and disabled residents died in the blaze.

The government

Damningly, the Inquiry found that the government was “well aware” of the risks posed by highly flammable cladding decades before the Grenfell Tower disaster, “but failed to act on what it knew”.

Alarm bells were raised to the government in 1991 after an 11-story residential tower, Knowsley Heights, suffered a cladding fire in Huyton, Merseyside. Fortunately, no one died in this fire, but fire crews warned the government that it had a “national scandal” on its hands if something was not done about the combustible cladding which had been used in many other buildings across the UK.

Safety tests conducted in 2001 showed that this type of cladding “burned violently” when in contact with fire. Despite the clear risks, these results were kept confidential within the government and no regulations were altered. The Inquiry heavily criticised the government for essentially brushing this under the carpet.

In 2009, a fire at Lakanal House in South London killed 6 people. The inquest concluded that the fire was largely caused by botched and unsafe renovation work. The coroner requested a government review of building regulations, but the Inquiry found that this was “not treated with any sense of urgency”.

The coalition government in 2010 went on a mission to cut a variety of regulations across the board – including fire safety regulations – in an attempt to boost the economy after the global financial crisis several years before.

Eric Pickles, David Cameron’s housing secretary until 2015, had “enthusiastically supported” the government’s ambition to cut down regulations. The Inquiry found that this meant that fire safety matters and risks to life “were ignored, delayed or disregarded” consistently by those who were in charge of it.

This historical ignorance of the government was a major contributing factor in the 2017 disaster, as outlined in the Inquiry.

What’s next?

Now that the Inquiry has concluded, police investigations can begin to identify possible cases suitable for criminal proceedings. The CPS will decide if criminal charges are to actually be brought. However, given the complexity and volume of the material, cases are not expected to be presented before the end of 2026, with any trials to be listed from 2027 onwards.

In April 2023, a group of 22 organisations and several government bodies, reached a civil settlement with 900 people affected by the fire.

The Inquiry made urgent recommendations for reform. When the Inquiry was published last week, Keir Starmer said that the government would formally respond within the next 6 months.

However, Sir Starmer confirmed that more would be done to speed up the removal of unsafe cladding from existing buildings and that the companies condemned by the Inquiry would be barred from receiving public contracts.

Only time will tell if the government is able to stick to their word…