Sir Martin Moore-Bick gives statement as Grenfell Tower inquiry final report published
Sir Martin Moore-Bick will be giving a statement as the final inquiry report is published at 11am. You can watch the inquiry’s chair give the address here …
We will bring you the key lines that emerge.
Key events
Starmer: Grenfell Tower report identifies ‘substantial and widespread failings’
The prime minister has said in parliament that Sir Martin Moore-Bick’s Grenfell Tower inquiry identified “substantial and widespread failings”.
PA Media reports Keir Starmer said:
My thoughts today are wholly with those bereaved by, and survivors of, the Grenfell Tower tragedy and the residents in the immediate community. This day is for them.
I hope that Sir Martin’s report can provide the truth they have sought for so long, and that it is step towards the accountability and justice they deserve.
The government will carefully consider the report and its recommendations, to ensure that such a tragedy cannot occur again.
I hope that those outside Government will do the same.
Given the detailed and extensive nature of the report, a further and more in-depth debate will be held at a later date
Sir Martin Moore-Bick has said he will end his statement by talking about section nine of the report, which contains “a detailed account of the circumstances surrounding the deaths of those who perished in the fire.”
He describes it as “the most personal part and contains the most difficult reading.”
He said “The detailed reconstruction we have provided will be for many, one of the most important parts of our report, although it may make painful reading, those who lost relatives and friends naturally feel a need to know as much as possible about their loved ones last moments.”
In a moment which will have been very difficult for survivors and their relatives, Moore-Bick assured them “we are satisfied that all those who died in the building were overcome by toxic gasses produced by the fire … in each case, we’re satisfied that all those whose bodies were damaged by the fire were already dead by the time it reached them.”
Moore-Bick: ‘more can and should be done’ to bring about ‘fundamental change’ in attitudes and practices of construction industry
Sir Martin Moore-Bick is speaking about the recommendations made in the report. He has told those watching the statement:
Although some steps have already been taken to respond to the many failures that we have identified, we think that more can and should be done to bring about a fundamental change in the attitudes and practices of the construction industry.
Only such a change can ensure that in future, buildings in general and higher risk buildings in particular are safe for those who live and work in them.
We think that in different ways, implementation of our recommendations will improve fire safety, particularly in high rise buildings, and ensure that dangerous materials cannot be used in construction in the future, they will also improve the efficiency of fire and rescue services nationally.
He continued:
Our recommendations include, but are not limited to the following, the appointment of a construction regulator to oversee all aspects of the construction industry, bringing responsibility for all aspects of fire safety under one government department, the establishment of a body of professional fire engineers, properly regulated and with protected status, and the introduction of mandatory fire safety strategies for higher risk buildings, a licensing scheme for contractors wishing to undertake the construction or refurbishment of higher risk buildings, the regulation and mandatory accreditation of fire risk assessors, the establishment of a college of Fire and Rescue to provide practical educational and managerial training to Fire and Rescue Services, and the introduction of a requirement for the government to maintain a publicly accessible record of recommendations made by select committees, coroners and public inquiries, describing the steps taken in response to them or its reasons for declining to implement them.
One of the first political reactions to the publication of the report has come from Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey, who has issued the following:
Our thoughts today are with the 72 people who tragically lost their lives in the horrifying Grenfell fire, as well as the survivors and bereaved families who have fought so long.
This is their day. They have waited too long to get the truth, and are still waiting for real justice and meaningful action. We owe it to them to ensure that this crucial report does not become another dust-covered book sitting on a shelf in Whitehall.
Dangerous cladding must be removed from all buildings as quickly as possible.
The Government must also act on the rest of the Inquiry’s findings with the urgency they demand – to hold those responsible to account and prevent another disaster like this from ever happening again.
CPS does do not expect to make any charging decisions until end of 2026
Vikram Dodd
Vikram Dodd is the Guardian’s police and crime correspondent
The Crown Prosecution Service has said that due to complexity of the case, it does not expect to make any charging decisions over the Grenfell Tower fire until late 2026 at the earliest.
In a statement, Frank Ferguson, Head of the CPS Special Crime and Counter Terrorism Division, said: “Our thoughts remain with the bereaved families and the survivors at what must be an extremely difficult time.
“We have been working closely with the Metropolitan police Service throughout their investigation and will therefore be in a strong position to review the completed evidential file, which they anticipate will be passed to us in 2026.
“Our team of specialist prosecutors will then carefully review the file but do not expect to be in a position to make any charging decisions until the end of 2026.
“Due to the sheer volume of evidence and complexity of the investigation, we will need to take the necessary time to thoroughly evaluate the evidence before providing final charging decisions.”
Grenfell United: final report speaks to ‘lack of competence, understanding and fundamental failure of duties of care’
Campaign group Grenfell United has issued a statement in response to the publication of the final report by the Grenfell Tower inquiry. It said the report “speaks to a lack of competence, understanding and a fundamental failure to perform the most basic of duties of care.”
It continued:
The recommendations published today are basic safety principles that should already exist, highlighting how the government’s roles, duties and obligations have been hollowed out by privatisation.
Where voids were created as the government outsourced their duties, Kingspan, Celotex and Arconic filled the gaps with substandard and combustible materials. They were allowed to manipulate the testing regimes, fraudulently and knowingly marketing their products as safe.
Our lawyers told the Inquiry that the corporate core participants – Arconic, Kingspan and Celotex – were “little better than crooks and killers”. The report makes clear that this statement is entirely true. We were failed in most cases by incompetence and in many cases by calculated dishonesty and greed.
Sir Martin Moore-Bick, speaking after the Grenfell Tower inquiry has published its final full report, has said government failed to consider properly the risks of flammable material in high-rise buildings. He said:
We find that there was a failure on the part of the government and others to give proper consideration at an early stage to the dangers of using combustible materials in the walls of high rise buildings, that including failing to amend, in an appropriate way, the statutory guidance on the construction of external walls. That is where the seeds of the disaster were sown.
He criticised the organisation managing the Grenfell Tower site on behalf of the local authority (the TMO), saying “we find that the organisation was badly run and failed to respond to criticisms of its treatment of residents.”
He said:
It is clear that for some years before the fire, relations between the TMO and residents were marked by distrust, antagonism and increasingly bitter confrontation, we find that for the TMO to have allowed the relationship to deteriorate to such an extent reflects a serious failure on its part to observe its basic responsibilities.
He continued, regarding the regime of fire safety management in the block, saying it was one of “persistent failure”, adding:
The TMO’s failure to attach sufficient importance to fire safety is illustrated by its reliance on a single person, Carl Stokes, as fire risk assessor for its entire estate, despite his lack of qualifications and experience,
If you want to download the full Grenfell Tower inquiry phase 2 report it can be found here.
Met police: it will take ‘at least 12-18 months’ to ‘secure justice’ for Grenfell victims
The Metropolitan police has said it will still take at least a further 12-18 months to “secure justice for those who died and all those affected by the fire” after Sir Martin Moore-Bick published the final report of the seven year Grenfell Tower inquiry.
In a statement issued this morning, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Stuart Cundy described the publication of the report as “a significant milestone for those deeply affected by the tragedy”, saying:
The report is direct, comprehensive and reaches clear conclusions. Our police investigation is independent of the public inquiry. It operates under a different legal framework and so we cannot simply use the report’s findings as evidence to bring charges.
To secure justice for those who died and all those affected by the fire we must examine the report – line by line – alongside the evidence from the criminal investigation. As I said previously, this will take us at least 12-18 months.
This will lead to the strongest possible evidence being presented to the Crown Prosecution Service so they can make charging decisions.
I can’t pretend to imagine the impact of such a long police investigation on the bereaved and survivors, but we have one chance to get our investigation right.
Cundy added that the police owe it to victims to “be thorough and diligent in our investigation while moving as swiftly as possible,” saying that “The thoughts of the Met are especially with the bereaved, survivors and residents as well as the wider Grenfell community.”
Moore-Bick: ‘dishonesty and greed’ a factor in the responsibility for the Grenfell Tower fire
Sir Martin Moore-Bick has said “the simple truth is that the deaths that occurred were all avoidable, and those who lived in the tower were badly failed over a number of years and in a number of different ways, by those who were responsible for ensuring the safety of the building and its occupants.”
He says “Not all of them bear the same degree of responsibility for the eventual disaster. But as our report shows, all contributed to it in one way or another. In most cases, through incompetence, but in some cases, through dishonesty and greed.”
He gave this list of people:
They include the government, the tenant management organisation the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, those who manufactured and supplied the materials used in the refurbishment, those who certified their suitability for use on high rise buildings, the architect, the principal contractor and some of its subcontractors, some of the consultants, the local authorities’ building control department and the London fire brigade.
Key players named in the Grenfell Tower report
Robert Booth
Arconic
Arconic is the multibillion-dollar US company whose French subsidiary made the combustible cladding panels on Grenfell Tower. The inquiry found that despite close to a decade of internal knowledge about some of the risks, it was “determined to exploit what it saw as weak regulatory regimes in certain countries including the UK”.
Kingspan and Celotex
The Irish company Kingspan, which turns over €8bn a year, made about only 5% of the combustible foam insulation on Grenfell Tower, but the inquiry found that by its “dishonest marketing” of its K15 product it “created the conditions” for Celotex, another insulation company, to try to break into the market by “dishonest means”.
According to the inquiry, “from 2005 until after this inquiry had begun [in 2017], Kingspan knowingly created a false market in insulation for use on buildings over 18 metres in height”. It did this by claiming a fire test of a wall system showed it could be used in any building taller than 18 metres when this “was a false claim, as it well knew”.
Central government
Officials and some ministers were “defensive and dismissive” when MPs raised concerns about fire safety of cladding before the Grenfell disaster.
“In the years that followed … the government’s deregulation agenda, enthusiastically supported by some junior ministers and the secretary of state [Eric Pickles], dominated the department’s thinking to such an extent that even matters affecting the fire safety of life were ignored, delayed or disregarded.”
But the problem in government went back further – as far as a cladding fire at Knowsley Heights, Liverpool in 1991. Between then and Grenfell, “there were many opportunities for the government to identify the risks … and to take action in relation to them”.
The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and the Kensington and Chelsea Tenants Management Organisation
The council landlord and its tenant management arm were behind the £10m refurbishment plan for Grenfell Tower. For years there had been “distrust, dislike, personal antagonism and anger” between officials at the tenants management association (TMO) and tenants.
“The TMO regarded some of the residents as militant troublemakers led on by a handful of vocal activists, principally Edward Daffarn, whose style they found offensive,” the inquiry found. “The result was a toxic atmosphere fuelled by mistrust on both sides.”
Daffarn was the resident who wrote on a blog eight months before the fire that: “Only an incident that results in serious loss of life of KCTMO residents” would expose “the malign governance of this non-functioning organisation”.
Studio E, Rydon and Harley Facades
The architect, main contractor and cladding contractor were strongly criticised. Studio E, a now defunct architectural practice, “demonstrated a cavalier attitude to the regulations affecting fire safety” and did not recognise that the cladding was combustible. It specified Celotex but it did not realise it was not suitable for use on a building more than 18 metres in height, in accordance with the statutory guidance.
Rydon gave “inadequate thought to fire safety, to which it displayed a casual attitude” and “failed to take proper steps to investigate Harley’s competence … it was complacent about the need for fire engineering advice”. It “bears considerable responsibility for the fire”, the report added.
Meanwhile, Harley “did not concern itself sufficiently with fire safety at any stage of the refurbishment and it appears to have thought that there was no need for it to do so, because others involved in the project and ultimately building control, would ensure the design was safe”.
Robert Booth
The bereaved and the survivors are gathered in the inquiry room awaiting the publication of the report and a statement from the chairman of the inquiry Sir Martin Moore-Bick. Among them are Anthony Roncolato, Wilie Thompson, Ed Daffarn and Thiago Alves. Also here are Elizabeth Campbell, the leader of RBKC and her deputy, Kim Taylor-Smith alongside a couple of dozen lawyers. The room is silent.
Sir Martin Moore-Bick has said that the inquiry has taken longer than he had hoped because “as our investigations progressed, we uncovered many more matters of concern than we had originally expected”.
Grenfell report blames decades of government failure and companies’ ‘systematic dishonesty’
Robert Booth
The Grenfell Tower disaster was the result of “decades of failure” by central government to stop the spread of combustible cladding combined with the “systematic dishonesty” of multimillion-dollar companies whose products spread the fire that killed 72 people, a seven-year public inquiry has found.
In a 1,700-page report which apportions blame for the 2017 tragedy widely, Sir Martin Moore-Bick, the chair of the inquiry, found that three firms – Arconic, Kingspan and Celotex – “engaged in deliberate and sustained strategies to … mislead the market”.
He also found the architects Studio E, the builders Rydon and Harley Facades and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea’s building control department all bore responsibility for the blaze.
The inquiry was highly critical of the tenant management organisation (TMO), which was appointed by the local authority, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC), to look after its thousands of homes but consistently ignored residents’ views. The TMO chief executive, Robert Black, established a “pattern of concealment … in relation to fire safety matters” and the TMO “treated the demands of managing fire safety as an inconvenience”.
Moore-Bick reserved some of his most damning conclusions for central government. The inquiry found that the government was “well aware” of the risks posed by highly flammable cladding “but failed to act on what it knew”.
Eric Pickles, David Cameron’s housing secretary until 2015, had “enthusiastically supported” the prime minister’s drive to slash regulations and it dominated his department’s thinking to the extent that matters affecting fire safety and risk to life “were ignored, delayed or disregarded”, the inquiry concluded.
Pickles also failed to act on a coroner’s 2013 recommendation to tighten up fire safety regulations after a cladding fire at Lakanal House, another London council block, killed six people. It was “not treated with any sense of urgency”
