Grenfell: Uncovered - what has changed since the fire, and what hasn't?

As a Netflix documentary about Grenfell becomes a viral hit, it is worth pausing to reflect on what is still to change since that horrible night in June 2017

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Grenfell Uncovered, the Netflix documentary in which I appear, was (at the time of writing) the number one film in the UK, and had been for the last four days - beating Denzel Washington’s Equalizer 3 to the top spot.

Based on the messages I’ve received over the last few days, it has achieved a depth of ‘cut through’ that no other coverage of the fire has yet attained. Many people who were only loosely aware of the blaze and the reasons for it are discovering this story for the first time.

As such, I think it might be helpful to provide a run down of what has changed and what still hasn’t in the eight years since the fire. As awareness of the film builds, now is a crucial opportunity to push for more to be done.

(A note - new subscribers who are here because of the film may also be interested in my detailed breakdown of the new information it uncovered about Arconic here, as well as my breakdowns of the inquiry report findings here, all of which are currently free to read)

Dangerous cladding

The crisis of buildings impacted by combustible cladding continues to be a major problem - and will be for many years to come.

I have told this story in more detail here but - in short - a combination of desperately permissive government guidance, poor enforcement, evasion of the rules and mismarketing led to a situation where thousands of multi-storey residential blocks were clad with combustible materials. Grenfell was only ever the tip of this iceberg.

The most recent statistics show 5,025 buildings above 11m in height with some degree of dangerous facade, but not all have yet been identified. The total figure is estimated to be around 10,000 - which may well mean more than a million people live in homes impacted by the crisis. Just 1,652 have completed remediation work. The total repair bill is estimated at a staggering £16.6bn - to be paid by a combination of taxpayers, the original developers, building owners and the residents of the buildings themselves.

These buildings are not all as dangerous as Grenfell. They encompass a wide range of buildings with different risks and for some, it could be argued that the life-safety implications are quite limited. In others, the risk is likely to be very extreme. The failure to distinguish one of these scenarios from the other is a big part of our ongoing struggle to fix the problem.

The impact on residents living in these buildings continues to be devastating: the cost of insurance, surveys and various other measures has been crippling, while they are mostly unable to sell and are stuck in blocks covered in scaffolding or trapped in an impasse where work has not even started. Not to mention the ongoing risk of fire.

The Labour government has promised a “remediation acceleration plan” which will see pressure placed on building owners to increase the pace of cladding removal, but this falls far short of the more direct intervention it promised in opposition.

Where there has been (belated) progress is the removal of ACM (PE) cladding (the kind used on Grenfell, and described in the film as like a petrol tanker on the outside of a building) from tall buildings. In total, 516 such buildings were identified - of which just 33 still have the cladding on their walls.

But this does not mean the risk from this material is gone. It is still present on medium and low rise towers in this country. And around the world, we know millions of square metres of it were sold for residential use before Grenfell, much of which remains on buildings waiting to ignite. Only Australia and some parts of the Middle East have had any serious sort of programme to identify its use and remove it. Last year, an ACM PE fire in Valencia, Spain, killed 10 people. Sadly, they are unlikely to be the last lives unnecessarily lost globally to this highly dangerous material.

Dangerous buildings

Cladding is not the only reason why buildings can be dangerous in a fire. Since Grenfell, there have been at least 15 major fires which spread through residential buildings in a way which could easily have put lives at risk - most recently in Andover just a couple of weeks ago.

Some of the scariest examples have not involved cladding at all, but have instead been driven by timber balconies or the lightweight timber frame structure of the building igniting. The latter has, on occasion, led to the complete destruction of buildings.

Then there is structural risk, which is a mounting concern in the built environment - particularly in relation to a legacy of tower blocks built in the 1950s and 1960s out of concrete slabs, with no reinforced frame (known technically as large-panel systems (LPS) buildings). These blocks are vulnerable to collapse in the event of a gas explosion or major fire, and are only becoming more dangerous as they age and increasingly extreme weather wears away at their joints.

There is also an endemic problem with poor internal ‘compartmentation’ (the measures put in place to stop smoke and flame spreading from flat to flat or into communal areas), much of which remains unaddressed. Buildings have not (for the most part) been retrofitted with sprinklers or alarms, so remain reliant on these ‘passive’ protections against fire spread.

The new Building Safety Regulator (BSR) - established in the wake of the fire - is currently assessing the safety of many of buildings (including the most dangerous LPS blocks), but this could well lead to a new crisis. If it finds them unsafe, where is the money to fix them going to come from? Will it even be possible to carry out the extensive strengthening work required? If not, residents face an unwelcome choice between living in an unsafe building or displacement from their home.

There have been changes to the way we build new homes. While sprinklers have not been retrofitted into blocks built before Grenfell, they are now mandatory for all new buildings over 11m. We have banned the use of combustible materials in external facades outright above 18m (although this took a fight). The new regulator has also introduced a system which requires builders to prove that their plans are compliant before they start building, and again before a new building is occupied. Second staircases will become mandatory in buildings taller than 18m from 2027.

But all of these changes have faced (and continue to face) resistance from those who believe they represent unnecessary red tape. As Starmer’s government promises to strip away restrictions on new house building, they will come under increasing pressure.

Fire doors

One of the most disturbing visual images of the film was the sight of black smoke curling in around the edge of the flat entrance door behind which the Gomes family and their neighbours were sheltering.

This spoke to a major part of the story which is regularly under-discussed in the context of Grenfell: the extent to which this was a disaster about failing fire doors as much as dangerous cladding.

That is not an exaggeration: it was the catastrophic failure of fire doors to self-close which led to lobbies filling up with smoke so early in the fire, and it was this which prevented many residents from escaping. I wrote here about the deep culpability for that which exists within the social housing providers responsible.

There is now a legal requirement for landlords to check fire door self-closers annually in all residential buildings above 11m in height. This is a less onerous requirement than the inquiry suggested, but it is a definite step forward and should prevent a mass self-closer failure of the kind seen at Grenfell (where 77 of 120 doors above the fourth floor had a broken or missing device).

Nonetheless, there are other problems. The flat entrance doors at Grenfell Tower were not properly resistant to smoke leakage. They also did not meet the 30 minute fire resistance requirements which they were advertised as possessing (and represent the minimum standard in law).

Many dangerous doors are still installed in the housing sector, and an effort to find and replace them has largely gone quiet. Worryingly, I hear from people in the industry that testing of new doors remains patchy at best. Manufacturers continue to test a very different doorset to the one they sell, for example, with no glass, no letterbox and no peephole. While these changes sound minor, they can have a major impact on fire resistance.

This is not a small concern. A 2022 fire at a block in the Bronx killed 17 people including eight children. This building had no cladding at all, it was the fire doors that failed.

Stay Put

Most high rise buildings around the UK still place complete reliance on a ‘stay put’ strategy to keep residents safe if a fire breaks out.

It is important to be clear about exactly why this is a problem and what we should be doing instead.

My view is that Stay Put is perfectly adequate as a ‘Plan A’ for most UK buildings.

In many fires, like those which took place at Grenfell before June 14 2017, it works well. It means residents don’t run into a place of danger, firefighters can quickly access the flat where the fire is located and residents are not worn down by regular, unnecessary evacuations to the point that fire alarms will be ignored.

But what we need - and all too often don’t have - is a Plan B.

Fires can get out of control. Even in blocks without cladding, blazes can climb from floor to floor via windows. When this happens people need a way to get out and responders need a way to raise the alarm. Building maintenance can never be perfect and fires are unpredictable. Whole and partial building evacuations are things that we need to be ready for.

This requires changes: some form of alarm or alert system to tell residents to get out once they need to. It requires explaining to residents when to leave, rather than simply regurgitating stay put advice. And it requires careful planning for those with disabilities (on which, more below). None of these things are in place for most buildings.

There has been progress in firefighting. The London Fire Brigade has successfully evacuated buildings since Grenfell, most notably at the Spectrum Building last summer. Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue has also done so - although both incidents were dangerous near misses, which relied on degrees of luck and bravery as well as smart planning.

But progress in fire authorities is difficult to track: fire fighting tactics are fragmented across the country and just because London and Manchester have moved forwards doesn’t mean everyone has.

Disabled residents

The Grenfell Tower fire has been described as a “landmark act of discrimination” against the disabled and vulnerable. Raymond ‘Moses’ Bernard, whose wonderful sisters spoke powerfully in the Netflix film, was one of 15 disabled residents to die in the fire.

This represents 40% of the tower’s population of disabled residents, and means residents with disabilities died at a much higher rate than those without. If you include relatives who stayed with these people and died alongside them, the number rises even further.

The first phase of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry recommended ‘Personal Emergency Evacuation Plans’ - which are used in workplace environments to plan for the evacuation of disabled people without the aid of firefighters - be applied to residential settings as well.

But this provoked behind-the-scenes lobbying from a variety of interest groups and the government quietly dumped the proposal. Instead it promised only that disabled residents of buildings with known safety issues would have their details stored in a premises information box for firefighters.

Labour has moved the dial forward in this area, but only slightly. Under their plans (yet to be implemented) all disabled people in high rises will get ‘person centred fire risk assessments’, which may result in specific adaptations to their flats (although there is a good chance they will be asked to pay for them). The names of all disabled residents will also be stored in premises information boxes - rather than just those in known-dangerous buildings.

But this plan is still flawed. It means those with disabilities will still be left with no way to get out if a fire gets out of control unexpectedly. Firefighter rescue in these circumstances, especially in a block with a large number of people with disabilities (like Grenfell), would be exceptionally difficult.

No one would pretend this is an easy problem to fix. Some of it comes down to a shocking lack of suitably adapted housing, which means people with disabilities are housed in conditions which are far from suitable when the lift breaks down - let alone if a fire starts.

Full residential PEEPs would be complex, occasionally impossible and may not always function as intended. But legislation which requires ‘best endeavours’ or ‘reasonably practicable’ steps is not unheard of in health and safety, and there are many out there for whom an evacuation plan, supported by relatives or neighbours, could be devised if the will and the funding was there.

Social housing

In the Netflix film, we heard how residents such as Eddie Daffarn had regularly raised concerns with their landlords, without being able to get them to take action. A key promise post the fire from Theresa May’s government was that this would change.

In the years since, there has been some progress. A new consumer regulation regime (belatedly introduced) has now placed a spotlight on the provision of services to residents of social landlords. New professional standards have been introduced for social housing staff. A newly beefed-up Ombudsman service is doing much more than it did before the fire to hold landlords to account when complaints are not properly addressed.

But there are still major gaps, and too many residents for whom the experiences described by those living in Grenfell before the fire will still ring depressingly true. Despite calls from bereaved and survivors, there remains no power for tenants to organise and hold their landlords to account. There is no requirement for tenant voices to be heard in local social housing decisions or in national policy making. Direct consequences for individual service failure in social housing remain limited. Tenants have no access to legal aid for housing issues in most cases.

All of this adds up to a situation where negative housing stories continue to be all-too-prevalent and those who are trying to hold bad landlords to account continue to bang up against a brick wall of bureaucracy and indifference, in precisely the same way as Mr Daffarn and his neighbours did before the fire.

Accountability and justice

A police investigation into the Grenfell fire rumbles on. The Metropolitan Police has interviewed 58 individuals and 19 companies under caution, but the timelines to actual trials remain achingly long.

An update last year revealed that charging files will not be submitted to the Crown Prosecution Service until 2026, with prosecutors then requiring at least a year to decide whether or not to bring charges. If everything runs on time, we will not see trials begin until mid 2027.

While the Met is right to say that this has been an extraordinarily complex investigation, this timeline (trials not even starting until a decade after the event) is plainly too long, and invokes the old cliche about justice delayed.

Despite this, it remains the hope of many in the community that this process will result in justice of a sort ultimately being served on at least some of those responsible. For those moved by the film, it is very important that this demand remains a visible, public issue, not something confined merely to those affected. All of us should feel angry if justice is not delivered for Grenfell, and those responsible for delivering it need to know that.

In terms of financial consequences, the implications have been limited.

A £150m civil settlement was agreed in 2023 and split between 900 parties impacted by the fire. This was paid collectively by 22 companies and organisations who agreed it after mediation with those impacted, all without admitting wrongdoing or culpability for the blaze.

For the larger corporations involved, such as Arconic, this is a fractional sum against their turnover and profits - and will likely have been covered by insurance.

Real financial penalties - such as bans from public contracting and wider liability to pay for other impacted buildings - could have been introduced by government by now. They have not yet been forthcoming, despite being regularly threatened. Financially - so far at least - the companies involved in this story have gotten away with it.

What you can do

For those emotionally moved by the film who want to act on all the above issues, it is hard to know precisely what to suggest. The hackneyed advice about writing to your MP is worth repeating, but it is worth as much as it always is (more than nothing, but only marginally). There are campaign groups covering all the above areas (End Our Cladding Scandal, Grenfell United, Disability Rights UK, Stop Social Housing Stigma, Social Housing Action Campaign and many more) who would benefit from your support and attention.

But really, the best support might be more intangible. Progress and change does correlate to the extent to which the public care about and talk about an issue. It’s often not clear exactly why, or exactly what it is that tips the balance. But if you’re moved by Grenfell and want to help affect change, perhaps the best thing to do is simply to not forget this feeling. Keep caring. Keep talking. Remember what happened and who was responsible and tell other people about it. As very small cogs in the vast machine which gave us the fire, there isn’t much else we can do. But when all of us do it at once, it can suddenly mean a great deal.

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 Show Me The Bodies. Or you can buy a copy here. My forthcoming book, Homesick, can be preordered here.