Grenfell Tower Fire | Case File COV-008

The File

Seventy-two people died in the Grenfell Tower fire of 2017. The Grenfell Tower Inquiry, chaired by Sir Martin Moore-Bick, published its Phase 2 report on September 4, 2024, running 1,700 pages and documenting decades of failure by government, regulators, and manufacturers dating back to the early 1990s. The report identified flammable cladding as the main factor in the fire's rapid spread and found that manufacturers had engaged in systematic dishonesty in their safety testing.

The Documented Record

2017: A fire at Grenfell Tower in London killed 72 people. [DOCUMENTED]

September 4, 2024: The Grenfell Tower Inquiry published its Phase 2 report, running 1,700 pages. [DOCUMENTED]

The report identified flammable cladding as the main factor contributing to the rapid spread of the fire, and traced the path to disaster back to the early 1990s. [DOCUMENTED]

The Inquiry found that cladding manufacturers had engaged in systematic dishonesty in their safety testing. [DOCUMENTED]

Chair Sir Martin Moore-Bick stated in his September 4, 2024 remarks that all 72 deaths were avoidable. [DOCUMENTED]

What the Record Does Not Establish

The record does not establish individual criminal convictions for the manufacturers or officials whose failures the Inquiry documented, since criminal proceedings, if brought, would follow through a separate legal process after the Inquiry's own findings. What is documented is the Inquiry's own finding that every death was avoidable and that the underlying failures dated back roughly three decades before the fire itself.

Sources

Connected Files

COV-001, COV-002, COV-006, and COV-007 document parallel UK institutional failures where documented risk was known well before the resulting harm occurred.