Grenfell Tower Inquiry report: preview
What does the report need to say, and what will its content mean for the chances of justice and change?
This content is not behind a paywall, but since it takes time to create and upload each piece, do please consider becoming a paid subscriber (especially if this project is something that you value, and you have the means to do so), which is either billed monthly at £3.50 or annually at £35. A paid subscriber has full access to the back catalogue of posts.
If you pay £40 or more for an annual subscription, I will send you a signed copy of my book. Or you can buy a copy here.
Tomorrow, the very long awaited Grenfell Tower Inquiry report will be published.
For an overview of the content of the evidence and some of key questions at stake, my previews are here, here and here.
But today, let’s take a slightly broader look at what the significance of the report is - and what it might mean for justice and change.
Overview
This report will be long - extremely long. The first phase had around 80 days of evidence to digest and was limited to the events of the night of fire, but still made it to 856 pages.
This report has more than 80 weeks of evidence to cover and a timeline stretching over 30 years. It will probably be multiple thousands of pages long. The media will only get a couple of hours to read it ahead of its release - so expect the early reports to be quite ‘topline’. There will be important detail that won’t emerge immediately.
It will contain what will be - essentially - the panel’s narrative view on what it has heard across these 80 weeks, and from its study of the thousands of other documents and expert reports which form the extraordinary library of evidence about how this fire was allowed to happen.
And “allowed” is a keyword there - we have already heard Richard Millett KC, lead counsel to the inquiry, advise the panel that they were “able to conclude with confidence” that “each and every one” of the deaths in the fire was “avoidable”.
A key job, then, will be working out where blame sits between the vast gallery of individuals, public bodies and corporations who hold some responsibility for the fire.
While hardly anyone whose actions came under the spotlight comes out of this clean, there are those whose actions had a more causative effect than others (and we will come back to this point).
Therefore, it is important that the report provides some sort of ranking between those who simply failed and those whose failures had major consequences.
To quote Mr Millett’s closing statement again: “The families of those who died and the wider public want to know who is to blame for this tragedy, how culpability is shared, and what will be done about it. Based on a close study and analysis of the facts you can and you must help them answer that question.”
This was one of the key asks lawyers for bereaved and survivors made in their closing statements, with one setting out an exemplar ‘rogues gallery’ of those who they saw as most responsible.
More broadly though, there is an opportunity for the report to make more sweeping, overarching points about the common causes of the failures which allowed Grenfell to happen.
The fire was described by lawyers in their opening statements back in 2020 as “a lens through which we see how we are governed” and - I would argue - this has proved disturbingly true. Many of the worst traits of our society converge in some way on the Grenfell fire, and the report has the opportunity to describe them in a way which makes a case for more fundamental change.
There was a common thread, for example, of a hollowed out state. Almost all of the public services which might have prevented the disaster - the civil service team responsible for building regulations guidance, the building control department at the local authority, the London Fire Brigade - shared a common theme of being worn down, worn out and lacking in any resource to do much beyond shovel through the daily list of tasks.
When a state comes to operate like this, failures become inevitable, and it is hard not to draw parallels between this and other current major inquiries in this regard.
Similarly policies of deregulation and localism shredded the democratic control that you might otherwise have expected to see, while privatisation left the bodies responsible for policing the construction products industry ripe for capture by it.
These may feel like political points, but they are also factual ones - clearly spelled out in the testimony of those who gave evidence and the contemporaneous documents which record their decision making and the reasons for it.
It has been up to the panel to draw these broad, societal threads together in a way which allows them to make clear, evidenced statements about why one of the most catastrophic failures of government in an advanced, wealthy economy came to pass.
Buried within this are other themes. There was controversy, for example, that the report did not tackle the issue of social housing head on.
But Grenfell also stands as a case study for the broader problems in social housing, and the evidence trail is there for the report to make clear, powerful findings in this regard (which we will come back to under the recommendations heading).
Similarly, the treatment of disabled residents - and their disproportionate suffering in the fire as a result - can be viewed as indicative of the value placed on the lives of disabled people in society as a whole.
The attitude that means one of our most decorated and celebrated sporting figures is left stranded on a train at King’s Cross, is the same attitude that leaves a social housing resident in a tower block with the smoke closing in because it was seen as too complex to work out how to evacuate them. The report should be bold enough to reach these sort of broad conclusions. The evidence is there to support it.
But a bigger question is what does this all mean? Will these thousands of pages and years of work be for nothing? Or will there be a tangible point in the form of justice and change?
Criminal charges
The Grenfell community is large and diverse, with many differing priorities and views. One thing everyone I’ve ever spoken to agrees about, though, is that justice for Grenfell involves criminal charges, and individuals in prison at the end of them.
So what might the report do to bring that closer, or could it prove a hindrance?
The police and criminal process has always been separate to the inquiry, but the inquiry’s work does influence what the police do.
Detectives have said they will need time to digest the report’s findings and to cross reference it with their own lengthy case files - a process which will take a year to 18 months, meaning they will not be able to provide charging files to the Crown Prosecution Service until the end of 2026.
Now, nothing the report says or doesn’t say will determine criminal liability. That is and will remain a matter for prosecutors (first) and juries (in due course). The inquiry is barred from making definitive statements about criminal culpability.
But what it can do is make statements about things which will be relevant to the criminal investigation.
For example, the most difficult legal hurdle to overcome for manslaughter prosecutions will be causation.
If gross negligence manslaughter charges are considered, for example, the likely defence will not be that the gross negligence did not take place, but that the gross negligence did not cause the deaths, because someone else’s error created a “break in the chain of causation” - in legal parlance.
So while the inquiry cannot be definitive about criminal culpability, it can be clear about causation. Sir Martin would be free to say that he “has no doubt that had X action been taken then Y outcome would have been avoided”, or he could say that he thinks “on the balance of probability, had this been done X or Y outcome may not have materialised”.
Particularly significant in this regard are the Module Eight ‘mini-inquest’ sections, where lawyers for the bereaved and survivors have been careful to draw clear and unambiguous lines between specific failings (a broken fire door on the 16th floor or the smoke ventilation system leaking smoke on the top floor for example) and consequences for their clients.
Moreover, the police are considering many charges where causation is not relevant, such as health and safety breaches, as well as fraud and misconduct in a public office. Some of these can come with hefty custodial sentences.
Here, the report could help influence prosecutors with its view on the reasonableness of the actions of parties involved, or its criticism of their behaviour. Sir Martin can call something a “flagrant breach” or “grossly unreasonable”. He can say that products were “plainly missold”. None of this language guarantees criminal prosecution, but it probably bolsters the chances.
Equally though, should he come to the conclusion that certain behaviours were reasonable in the circumstances, or failures to act not inconsistent with normal professional practice, it may be hard to persuade the CPS that there is a realistic chance of prosecution. So a lot rides on the language used and the conclusions reached.
Recommendations
And what of change?
The new Labour government took some tentative steps towards this on Monday by promising to implement (and fund) Personal Emergency Evacuation Plans (PEEPs) - a move which had previously been rejected by the Home Office under the Conservtives, despite being recommended by the first phase of the inquiry.
The new government has also said it will abolish national fire safety classes for construction products and move to the European ‘Euroclass’ standards. This ends the bizarre position we’ve been in since 2001, when effectively an indefinite transitionary period meant both applied simultaneously. We will also get CE product marking certification for construction materials.
All of these are good steps and things the inquiry would likely have called for - given the evidence. So getting ahead and showing willingness to act is promising.
Nonetheless, there are many further areas of change where the government will probably be called to take more drastic steps.
One clear and obvious one is the creation of some body to oversee the implementation of inquiry recommendations.
This has been loudly called for by INQUEST and others, but not promised by the new government (they have committed to the other half of this campaign - a duty of candour).
But the Grenfell story demands this, not just because the first phase recommendations it made itself were initially rejected, but also because the Grenfell fire is in itself a story about missed recommendations.
If the Lakanal House coroner’s recommendation in 2013 of a review of building regulations guidance with particular regard to the external envelope of a building had been followed, then perhaps we would have had no need for an inquiry at all. If the LFB had been held to account for saying it had implemented the recommendations which were aimed at it, then perhaps we would have had properly trained call handlers and incident commanders when the fire broke out.
Putting a National Audit Office style body in place to ensure this sort of process is no longer ignored and swept under the carpet seems an obvious and immediate change.
And what changes might be recommended that this new body would (potentially) oversee?
In the construction sector, the dire lack of individual responsibility and accountability for safety was a consistent theme of Module One. So was the cost cutting that was driven by price-based procurement.
The Building Safety Act (BSA) implemented in 2022 goes some way to address the former, but has very little to say about the latter. Other safety standards are not addressed by the BSA, despite seeming extremely relevant to Grenfell. So will the inquiry be bold enough to make further recommendations for change in an area the government has already reformed? Or will it hold back?
Similarly, the first phase report stopped short of major criticism of the recladding regime of other buildings, beyond an exaltation to get combustible materials off as quickly as possible. Will Phase Two take any further steps?
Similarly, despite the Phase One report committing to a look into whether or not sprinklers might have stopped the Grenfell Tower fire, we heard almost nothing on this issue during the weeks of evidence. So will it come up in the report recommendations, or be left out?
Substantive recommendations are also likely with regard to housing policy.
There are good lines of evidence which would point to recommendations for more resident involvement. The managing agent at Grenfell Tower had a ‘modular management agreement’ which meant it should have been consulting residents on the major refurbishment of their homes. It didn’t - at least not in a meaningful way - and disaster followed.
If residents had been given a say, would they have accepted the cheapest cladding, or insisted on a fire retardant option? Would they have agreed to removing the fire engineer from the project for cost reasons? Would they have appointed an architects firm with no prior experience of overcladding a high rise?
The list of these goes on, and the answer is almost always the same: of course they wouldn’t have.
The inquiry then has compelling evidence to support a recommendation for meaningful, practical consultation with people who live in a building about the work which is done to it.
This is an area which - despite the major reforms to social housing regulation - remains basically unaddressed in the seven years since the fire. It’s also something the former chair of Grenfell’s leaseholder association is desperate to see.
A huge part of the Grenfell story, which the inquiry has never shied away from acknowledging, is also that many more people could have been saved from the building with a different firefighting strategy.
That is already a finding of fact from Phase One, but Phase Two will go into considerably more depth about why the London Fire Brigade reached a point where it failed in this way.
The conclusion, and the expert evidence which was scathing about the LFB’s operation, should support big conclusions about what a 21st Century fire and rescue service should look like.
In a nutshell, this means moving away from the unreconstructed, macho, heroic, traditional nature of firefighting to something more modern, where evacuation, prevention, preparation and dynamic thinking are as important (if not more) than bashing in doors and getting water on the flames as quickly as possible.
And what of the government operation per se? It is probably too much to ask for the Grenfell Tower Inquiry to recommend a complete rethinking of the role of the state in a late capitalist economy, but there are areas in which its recommendations should not be shy about driving change.
If we are going to acknowledge (as we presumably must) that the client-style relationship of the private enforcement, standards and testing bodies under review resulted in industry capture and desperately damaging outcomes for the public, then perhaps we need to see a recommendation that these bodies are renationalised?
If we are going to acknowledge (as we presumably must) that the low priority placed on regulation and its constant dismissal as red tape played a part in the “red alert” warnings of a disaster being missed, then perhaps we need to see a clear statement of how to balance deregulation against public safety?
If we are going to acknowledge (as we presumably must) that the relevant state bodies not only failed to prevent Grenfell, but failed to respond on the night and failed to provide a humanitarian response in the aftermath, then perhaps we need recommendations covering the hollowed out nature of our public services and what that means for their capacity to respond to an unexpected catastrophe?
All of these are big policy questions. But Grenfell was a big event, this has been a big inquiry, and we can only hope now that the final report has the confidence in itself to reflect that and say what it needs to.
This content is not behind a paywall, but since it takes time to create and upload each piece, do please consider becoming a paid subscriber (especially if this project is something that you value, and you have the means to do so), which is either billed monthly at £3.50 or annually at £35. A paid subscriber has full access to the back catalogue of posts.
If you pay £40 or more for an annual subscription, I will send you a signed copy of my book. Or you can buy a copy here.