A damning report on a deadly London high-rise fire concluded Wednesday (September 4, 2024) that decades of failures by government, regulators and industry turned Grenfell Tower into a “death trap” where 72 people lost their lives.

The years-long public inquiry into the 2017 blaze found that there was no “single cause” of the tragedy, but said a combination of dishonest companies, weak or incompetent regulators and complacent government led the building to be covered in combustible cladding that turned a small apartment fire into the deadliest blaze on British soil since World War II.

The inquiry’s head, retired judge Martin Moore-Bick, said the victims’ deaths were all avoidable residents “were badly failed over a number of years” by multiple people and organizations.

“All contributed to it in one way or another, in most cases through incompetence but in some cases through dishonesty and greed,” he said.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer apologized on behalf of the British state, saying the tragedy “should never have happened” and promising to act on the report’s recommendations.

“Today is a long-awaited day for truth but it must now lead to a day of justice,” he told Parliament.

While the report may give survivors some of the answers they have long sought, they must wait to see whether anyone responsible will be prosecuted. Police will examine the inquiry’s conclusions before deciding on charges, which could include corporate or individual manslaughter. They say any prosecutions are unlikely before late 2026.

Natasha Elcock of the group Grenfell United urged authorities to “deliver justice and bring charges against those who are culpable for the deaths of our loved ones.”

“We paid the price for systematic dishonesty, institutional indifference and neglect,” said Elcock, a survivor who lost her uncle in the fire.

The fire broke out in the early hours of June 14, 2017, in a fourth-floor apartment and raced up the 25-story building like a lit fuse, fueled by flammable cladding panels on the tower’s exterior walls.

The tragedy horrified the nation and raised questions about lax safety regulations and other failings by officials and businesses that contributed to so many deaths.

“How was it possible in 21st century London for a reinforced concrete building, itself structurally impervious to fire, to be turned into a death trap?” asked the report.

It concluded: “There is no simple answer to that question.”

Grenfell Tower, built from concrete in the 1970s, had been covered during a refurbishment with aluminum and polyethylene cladding — a layer of foam insulation topped by two sheets of aluminum sandwiched around a layer of polyethylene, a combustible plastic polymer that melts and drips on exposure to heat.

The report was highly critical of companies that made the cladding. It said they engaged in “systematic dishonesty,” manipulating safety tests and misrepresenting the results to claim the material was safe.

It said insulation manufacturer Celotex was unscrupulous, and another insulation firm, Kingspan, “cynically exploited the industry’s lack of detailed knowledge.” Cladding panel maker Arconic “concealed from the market the true extent of the danger,” the report said.

It said the combustible cladding was used because it was cheap and because of “incompetence of the organizations and individuals involved in the refurbishment” — including architects, engineers and contractors — all of whom thought safety was someone else’s responsibility.

The inquiry concluded the failures multiplied because bodies in charge of enforcing building standards were weak, the local authority was uninterested and the “complacent” U.K. government — led from 2010 to July 2024 by the Conservative Party — ignored safety warnings because of a commitment to deregulation.

The inquiry has held more than 300 public hearings and examined around 1,600 witness statements. An initial report published in 2019 criticized the fire department for initially telling residents to stay in their apartments and await rescue. By the time the advice was changed, it was too late for many on the upper floors to escape.

London Fire Brigade came in for further criticism for a “chronic lack of effective management and leadership,” poor training in high-rise fires and outdated communications equipment.

The Grenfell tragedy prompted soul-searching about inequality in Britain. Grenfell was a public housing building set in one of London’s richest neighborhoods, near the pricey boutiques and elegant houses of Notting Hill. The victims, largely people of color, came from 23 countries and included taxi drivers and architects, a poet, an acclaimed young artist, retirees and 18 children.

The report said the inquiry had “seen no evidence that any of the decisions that resulted in the creation of a dangerous building or the calamitous spread of fire were affected by racial or social prejudice,” though it said the public body that managed Grenfell Tower had failed to treat residents with “understanding and respect.”

The Prime Minister said the tragedy “poses fundamental questions about the kind of country we are, a country where the voices of working class people and of those of color have been repeatedly ignored and dismissed.”

After the fire, the U.K. government banned metal composite cladding panels for new buildings and ordered similar combustible cladding to be removed from hundreds of tower blocks across the country. But the work hasn’t been carried out on some apartment buildings because of wrangling over who should pay.

Mr. Starmer said work to remove the dangerous cladding had been “far, far too slow.”

The report made multiple recommendations, including tougher fire safety rules, a national fire and rescue college and a single independent regulator for the construction industry to replace the current mishmash of bodies.

The ruined tower, which stood for months after the fire like a black tombstone on the west London skyline, still stands, now covered in white sheeting. A green heart and the words “Grenfell forever in our hearts” are emblazoned at the top.

Sandra Ruiz, whose 12-year-old niece, Jessica Urbano Ramirez, died in the fire, said that “for me, there’s no justice without people going behind bars.”

“Our lives were shattered on that night. People need to be held accountable,” she said. “People who have made decisions putting profit above people’s safety need to be behind bars.”

The UK’s Grenfell Tower fire disaster that killed 72 people was the result of “decades of failure” by government and construction industry bodies and the “systematic dishonesty” of building material firms, a damning final report said on Wednesday.

The fire in the early hours of June 14, 2017 spread rapidly through the 24-storey block in west London due to highly combustible cladding fixed to the exterior.

Started in a faulty freezer on the fourth floor, the blaze took barely half an hour to climb to the building’s top floor with catastrophic consequences.

The highly-critical report marks the end of a two-part independent inquiry led by retired judge Martin Moore-Bick into Britain’s worst residential fire since World War II.

Unveiling his findings, Moore-Bick said all the 72 deaths as a result of the fire were “all avoidable” and said the victims had been “badly failed”.

Some of those who played a part in the sowing the seeds of disaster had shown “incompetence”, as well as “dishonesty and greed”, he said.

The report makes scathing criticism of government and other influential bodies over a refurbishment of Grenfell that led to the cladding and other dangerous materials being installed.

In particular the report condemns firms involved in supplying rainscreen cladding panels and other insulation products.

Accusing them of “systematic dishonesty”, it said they “engaged in deliberate and sustained strategies to manipulate the testing processes, misrepresent test data and mislead the market”.

Following the release of the report, Prime Minister Keir Starmer pledged that his government would ensure a similar tragedy does not occur again.

“The Government will carefully consider the report and its recommendations, to ensure that such a tragedy cannot occur again,” he said in a written statement to parliament.

‘Stay-put’

The London Fire Brigade (LFB) also comes in for heavy criticism with senior officers described as “complacent”.

The service failed to ensure that the danger posed by the increasing use of cladding “was shared with the wider organisation and reflected in training”, it said.

It also failed to learn the lessons of a previous fire in 2009 which “should have alerted the LFB to the shortcomings in its ability to fight fires in high-rise buildings”.

Residents who phoned the emergency services were told to remain in their flats and await rescue for nearly two hours after the fire broke out.

The “stay-put” advice, now considered to have cost lives, has since been revised.

It led to some of the men, women and children who died, including whole family groups, becoming trapped in their own homes.

Abdulaziz El-Wahabi, 52, and his wife Faouzia, 41, died on the 21st floor with their three children, the youngest of whom, Mehdi, was eight years old.

Mehdi’s teacher recalled his ability to “make us laugh and smile” and “lighten our mood”.

Abdulaziz was described as a “loyal family man” who would always “help neighbours with their bags and open doors”.

Faouzia was “lively and friendly”.

The tragedy’s youngest victims were a still-born child and a six-month-old baby, Leena Belkadi, found with her mother in a stairwell between the 19th and 20th floors.

Dangerous buildings

The disaster has left many people living in buildings covered in similar cladding permanently fearful of a repeat tragedy.

Those who owned their own homes also faced financial problems as their apartments became unsaleable.

The UK’s then Conservative government announced in 2022 that developers would be required to contribute more to the cost of the removal, with those in buildings over 11 metres high not having to pay at all.

But a fire in Dagenham, east London, just over a week ago illustrated the ongoing risks.

Over 80 people had to be evacuated in the middle of the night after waking to smoke and flames in a block where work to remove “non-compliant” cladding was part-completed.

London fire commissioner Andy Roe said there were still around 1,300 buildings in London alone where urgent “remediation” work still needed to be done.

Criminal charges?

Bereaved relatives and survivors said ahead of the report they hoped it would bring them what they say is the “truth we deserve”.

For some that means jail for those who “made decisions putting profit above people’s safety”.

“For me there’s no justice without people going behind bars,” said Sandra Ruiz, whose 12-year-old niece Jessica Urbano Ramirez died.

London’s Metropolitan Police, however, has said its investigators will need until the end of 2025 to finalise its own investigation.

Prosecutors will then need a year to decide whether anyone will face charges.

For former Grenfell Tower resident Edward Daffarn, however, a delay that long is unacceptable.

“We are not prepared to wait for much longer, and this report needs to be the catalyst for significant movement forward from the Met Police in bringing charges against people who perpetrated the deaths of 72 people,” he said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)