Grenfell Tower fire report in the UK: key takeaways

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A damning final report into the Grenfell Tower fire in London, which killed 72 people, was published on Wednesday, concluding that the disaster was “the culmination of decades of failure”.

At more than 1,700 pages, the public inquiry report details failings by the government, fire services and construction industry bodies, as well as “systematic dishonesty” by the companies that supplied the building materials.

Here are five key findings:

Inquiry chairman Martin Moore-Bick said the deaths in the 2017 fire were “all preventable”. Governments had ignored warning signs about the use of combustible materials as cladding “as far back as 1991”.

Years of deregulation before the disaster meant that “even issues affecting the safety of human life were ignored, delayed or neglected,” the report said.

Moore-Bick said the government's failure to change guidelines on building external walls “sowed the seeds of disaster”.

The first phase of the report, published in 2019, concluded that combustible cladding attached to the tower's walls was the “primary reason” for the rapid spread of flames in the 24-storey west London building.

The aluminium composite rainscreen panels used in the building's walls were manufactured by Arconic Architectural Products, which the latest report said had “deliberately concealed” the material's flammability.

The report found that Arconic “was determined to exploit what it saw as weak regulatory regimes” in countries such as the UK.

Other companies, Celotax and Kingspan, are accused of using “dishonest” means to market combustible insulation.

The building standards and product compliance bodies were also deemed “incompetent”.

The report found that the architect and contractor behind the tower's renovation were also responsible for the use of combustible materials in the walls.

The aluminium composite material was used “largely for cost reasons”, with combustible materials chosen due to a “series of errors” and a “casual approach”.

The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, the local council, failed to properly assess the plans' compliance with building regulations.

The investigation also found a “persistent indifference” to fire safety and the safety of vulnerable people by the Tenant Management Organisation, the public body responsible for the building.

The person tasked with assessing the tower's fire safety was “inadequately qualified to carry out fire risk assessments” of the scale required for the building, the report said.

London Fire Brigade has been heavily criticised, with senior officers described as “complacent”, despite the service's failings in tackling fires in high-rise buildings.

After a fire in 2009, the LFB continued to believe that building regulations would be sufficient to prevent external wall fires, the report notes. Firefighters were “not trained” to deal with cases like Grenfell, where buildings were not compliant.

The service was also unable to “respond effectively” to the large number of calls for help made during the fire.

For almost two hours after the fire broke out, Grenfell residents who called emergency services in the early hours of June 14 were told to stay in their flats and wait for help.

Men, women and children, including entire families, were trapped in their homes and died. This “stay at home” advice, now considered to have cost lives, has since been revised.

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