Category Archives: Grenfell Tower fire

Councillor who oversaw Grenfell works donated to Badenoch’s Tory leadership bid

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Survivor of blaze which killed 72 ‘disgusted’ Quentin Marshall gave £5,000 to candidate promoting deregulation

One of Kemi Badenoch’s Tory leadership campaign funders is a councillor who had oversight of Grenfell Tower and dismissed some residents’ complaints about the pre-fire refurbishment as “grossly exaggerated”.

One survivor of the blaze that killed 72 people said he was “disgusted” that Quentin Marshall, a senior politician at the Conservative-controlled Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) which owned the block, has given £5,000 to the current shadow housing secretary to help her become the leader of the opposition.

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Grenfell survivors urge golfer Leona Maguire to axe Kingspan sponsorship

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Irish building materials firm was identified by Grenfell inquiry as behaving with ‘persistent dishonesty’

A second professional golfer, Leona Maguire, is under pressure to end her sponsorship deal with the Irish company Kingspan after the public inquiry into the Grenfell Tower disaster found it behaved with “persistent dishonesty” in selling combustible foam insulation.

Grenfell United (GU), the bereaved and survivors group, is calling on the 29-year-old to drop the firm and stop wearing its logo on her golf shirts after the Ryder Cup player Shane Lowry announced he was doing so earlier this week.

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Tony Blair told to ‘take responsibility’ after Grenfell criticism

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Campaigners call for apology after inquiry report makes several criticisms of decisions made during Blair’s tenure

Grenfell campaigners have called on Tony Blair to apologise and take responsibility for decisions made by his government that contributed to the fire that killed 72 people.

The former prime minister said on Thursday that tragedies such as the west London fire, which came after years of missed opportunities to regulate combustible cladding, were a result of unavoidable mistakes.

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Do public inquiries work? What comes after Grenfell and other UK disasters

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People involved in some of the UK’s highest-profile recent inquiries discuss what they achieved and what was left undone

After the final report of the Grenfell fire inquiry was published, Hisam Choucair, who lost six family members in the blaze, said: “We did not ask for this inquiry … It’s delayed the justice my family deserves.”

Although he thanked the inquiry for its findings, Choucair was devastated that the police had put the criminal investigation on the back burner until it had concluded. A decision on prosecutions is now not expected to happen until the end of 2026 at the earliest.

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Justice for Grenfell deaths may not come this decade, warns former chief prosecutor

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Lord Macdonald warns of likely delays in criminal justice system as survivors denounce ‘arrogant’ building firms

Justice for those responsible for the 72 deaths in the Grenfell Tower fire may not come until the end of this decade, a former chief prosecutor has warned, as survivors voiced growing fury over building firms’ “arrogant” refusal to admit wrongdoing.

The public inquiry findings of “systematic dishonesty” by multimillion-dollar building companies involved in the tower’s disastrous refurbishment prompted a clamour for accelerated criminal charges this week, seven years on from the blaze.

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The final Grenfell inquiry report and what it means for families – Politics Weekly UK

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The 2017 Grenfell Tower fire in London was the result of ‘decades of failure’ by central government, the public inquiry into the catastrophe has found. The Guardian’s John Harris looks at the findings of the report with the social affairs leader writer Susanna Rustin. And, as Labour continues to warn ‘things will get worse before they get better’, we are joined by the economists James Meadway and Ann Pettifor to discuss whether a painful period of austerity-lite is the only way through the storm

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‘Everyone failed them’: what the papers say on report into deadly Grenfell Tower fire

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British papers hone in on push for criminal charges after inquiry blames 2017 disaster on government failures and dishonesty of companies

UK papers on Thursday focused on the seven-year public inquiry into the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire, which concluded that the deaths of 72 people were avoidable and blamed “decades of failure” by central government to stop the spread of combustible cladding combined with the “systematic dishonesty” of the multimillion-dollar companies producing it.

The Guardian headlined its story “Grenfell: a disaster caused by ‘dishonesty and greed’”. It reported that police are now “under pressure to accelerate the criminal investigation” into the blaze, although it could be another 12 to 18 months before police can send files to prosecutors to consider charges.

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Keir Starmer offers apology ‘on behalf of British state’ to victims of Grenfell Tower fire – as it happened

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Prime minister says country failed its most fundamental duty to protect those affected by fire as he apologises to families affected. This live blog is closed

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.

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Seven years after Grenfell disaster, thousands live in fear of cladding fire

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As the final report on the fatal London blaze looms, many developers have not begun safety work

• Rowan Moore: The Grenfell inquiry is exposing a culture of contempt that has run deep in Britain

Grenfell was an avoidable tragedy, the inquiry’s counsel said on the final day of hearings. Yet with the report into the blaze that claimed 72 lives due this week, residents of other tower blocks fear that not enough has been done to prevent another catastrophe.

One of them is Gemma Lindfield. The 45-year-old barrister is still waiting for flammable cladding to be removed from her eight-storey apartment block in east London. It took three years before anyone even realised there was a problem. The following four years have been mired in indecision and wrangling about exactly who will pay to fix it.

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Removal of unsafe cladding from buildings ‘too slow’, says Angela Rayner

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Deputy PM visited Dagenham, east London, after fire tore through block of flats undergoing remedial works

Angela Rayner has called efforts to remove unsafe cladding from thousands of at-risk buildings “too slow” and said it was her job to ensure remaining works finished as quickly as possible.

The deputy prime minister made the comments during a visit to Dagenham, east London, on Tuesday afternoon, the day after a dramatic fire tore through a block of flats that was undergoing remedial works to remove “non-compliant” cladding.

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‘Really upsetting’: Grenfell Tower edited out of TV advert

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Exclusive: Man whose uncle died in 2017 disaster describes ad for pain relief gel Voltarol as ‘insulting’

Grenfell Tower has been edited out of a TV advert in a move described as “insulting” by a family bereaved by the June 2017 disaster.

Karim Mussilhy, whose uncle Hesham Rahman was among 72 people who died as a result of the fire, noticed the edit while watching the Channel 4 streaming service on Monday when an advert for the pain relief gel Voltarol showed people playing football on the Westway football pitches close to the council block.

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Final death toll from Spanish tower block blaze is nine, say police

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Authorities lower count of victims in Valencia fire, with one more person considered missing

Spanish police have said the final death toll from a devastating fire that tore through a 14-storey block of flats in the eastern city of Valencia is nine, with one person thought to have died now considered missing and all others accounted for.

El País cited national police as saying that after forensic analysis of the bodies found in the charred building, they had lowered the number of victims from the 10 previously reported by the Spanish government’s representative in the region.

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Grenfell survivor in whose flat fire started describes anguish to victims’ event

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Behailu Kebede remains ‘broken inside’ despite bearing no responsibility, as company executives listen at testimony week

The minicab driver in whose flat the Grenfell Tower fire started has said his heart is “full of pain, grief and desolation” and he can “never forget that it was in my flat, in my kitchen that the fire started … and all those lives were lost”.

Behailu Kebede, who lived in Grenfell Tower for 25 years, told a highly charged hearing in central London – attended by 24 executives from companies accused of responsibility for the fire – that he remains “broken inside”.

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Writer of Grenfell play says people must be jailed for what happened

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Gillian Slovo’s play at National Theatre uses words of survivors of 2017 fire at west London tower block

People must be jailed for what happened at Grenfell Tower, the award-winning author Gillian Slovo has said, as her play about the disaster prepares to open at the National Theatre in London.

Slovo, who gained international recognition with her novel Red Dust, set in South Africa’s post-apartheid truth and reconciliation commission, has used dialogue gleaned verbatim from interviews with 10 of the survivors for the play, which has left actors in tears after preview performances. In an interview with the Guardian she said: “Without jail time, how’s it going to stop anybody else doing this in the future?”

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Use of Kingspan insulation on towers near Grenfell angers residents

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Council orders contractor to immediately remove material made by firm implicated in 2017 disaster

Materials made by a company implicated in the Grenfell Tower disaster have been installed on a pair of nearby council tower blocks during fire safety works, in a move met with outrage in the west London community.

Insulation made by Kingspan, the firm that provided some of the combustible foam on the tower, which went up in flames on 14 June 2017 killing 72 people, was discovered last week on the Adair and Hazelwood towers, a few hundred metres from Grenfell.

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Grenfell fire: National Theatre play to tell survivors’ stories

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Production is at centre of collaboration with west London community affected by 2017 disaster

The National Theatre is to stage a verbatim play based on accounts by survivors and those bereaved by the Grenfell Tower fire almost six years ago as the centrepiece of a long-term collaborative project with the west London community.

The play, Grenfell: in the words of survivors, is the work of the novelist and playwright Gillian Slovo, who spent five years gaining the confidence of community members and recording their accounts of the disaster in north Kensington which killed 72 people.

Grenfell: In the Words of Survivors will be at the National Theatre from 13 July until 26 August.

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Gove admits ‘faulty’ guidance partly to blame for Grenfell fire

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Minister says he wants to abolish ‘outdated, feudal’ system of home ownership by end of this parliament

Michael Gove has admitted that “faulty and ambiguous” government guidance was partly responsible for the Grenfell Tower tragedy. The UK housing secretary said lax regulation allowed cladding firms to “put people in danger in order to make a profit”.

Gove’s remarks come more than five years after the tower block fire that killed 72 people.

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‘Mental torture’: six years after Grenfell, UK residents still live in fear as cladding deal falters

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A government agreement with developers was meant to solve the fire safety crisis in affected buildings – but the wrangling goes on

In June 2021, Charlotte Meehan received a safety inspection report for her block of flats as part of the nationwide checks after the Grenfell Tower fire. It made for grim reading, warning that the block had been built with combustible cladding and insulation.

Last April, the government announced a “wide-ranging” agreement with developers to fix the crisis of unsafe tall buildings, but Meehan, 34, and her fellow residents in the four-storey block in east London, are among tens of thousands still waiting for their homes to be made safe.

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Grenfell fire inquiry ends with shocking reminder of the human cost

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The final evidence sessions have heard unflinching accounts of how victims died, panicking and desperate in horrific conditions

The public inquiry into the Grenfell Tower disaster is ending as it began: with a shocking reminder of the human cost. It opened in May 2018 with elegies to the 72 victims. Its final evidence sessions have been unflinching accounts of the violence of their final moments.

The hearings sought to satisfy the fact-finding requirements of the coroner but swung the spotlight of an often highly technical inquiry back to the sheer barbarity wrought upon a community that still awaits justice.

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Grenfell Tower legal costs on course to top £250m

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As five-year anniversary approaches, figures reveal public inquiry into the fire has spent £149m so far

Legal bills relating to the Grenfell Tower fire are on course to top a quarter of a billion pounds, according to figures obtained by the Guardian on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the disaster.

The public inquiry into the causes of the fire that killed 72 people in the west London tower block has spent £149m so far with more than £60m going to lawyers working for the core participants, the inquiry revealed on Thursday.

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