London Grenfell Tower fire inquiry concludes

The inquiry into the Grenfell Tower disaster, Britain's worst residential fire since the Second World War, is due to deliver its long-awaited findings on Wednesday.

Seventy-two people died in the fire that broke out on 14 June 2017 and took less than half an hour to spread throughout the 24-storey tower block, which was home to mostly low-income families, in west London.

The cause ? Highly combustible façade cladding.

Led by retired judge Martin Moore-Bick, the latest phase of the inquiry is looking into how a fire that started out small could spread so quickly.

The Grenfell Tower fire, the worst residential fire in Great Britain, on June 14, 2017 in London © AFP – Daniel LEAL

Entire families were trapped in the flames. Among them, that of Abdulaziz El-Wahabi, 52, who died with his wife Faouzia, 41, and their three children, the youngest of whom, Mehdi, was eight years old.

The youngest victims are a stillborn child and a six-month-old baby, Leena Belkadi, found with her mother in a stairwell between the 19th and 20th floors.

Residents who called emergency services were asked to stay in their apartments and wait for help. Widely criticized, this instruction has since been revised.

– “Non-compliant” cladding –

The first phase of the investigation, published in October 2019, concluded that the cladding of the façade was the “main cause” of the spread of the fire.

The second, which began in January 2022, focused on technical issues such as the effectiveness of safety tests for construction materials.

In total, they gave rise to more than 300 hearings and the examination of more than 1,600 testimonies.

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The disaster left many people living in buildings with similar cladding fearing a repeat of the tragedy.

Some survivors remain haunted by the tragedy, such as Emma Louise O'Connor, who told AFP she still freezes in fear when she hears a fire engine siren.

The then British Conservative government announced in 2022 that developers would be required to contribute more to the cost of removing the cladding.

But the issue is far from settled.

In late August in Dagenham, east London, more than 80 people had to be evacuated in the middle of the night after being woken by smoke and flames in a building where work to remove “non-compliant” cladding had been partly completed.

According to London Fire Commissioner Andy Roe, there are still around 1,300 buildings in the city that need urgent “remediation” work.

– Criminal prosecutions ? –

One of the victims' groups, Grenfell United, has called for assurances that the inquiry's recommendations will be implemented.

It says that if recommendations made following an inquiry into a 2009 fire at a London apartment block had been implemented, the outcome of the Grenfell fire “could have been very different”.

It is calling for a new independent body to be set up to collate the findings of all the inquiries

Grieving parents and survivors, for their part, have said they hope the inquiry will bring them the “truth we deserve.”

For some, it means a prison sentence for those who “made decisions that put profit above people's safety.”

London police have warned they will not be able to report until the end of 2025.

Prosecutors will then need a year to decide whether to bring criminal charges. For Edward Daffarn, a former resident of the tower, such a long delay is unacceptable.

“We are not prepared to wait any longer, and this report must be the catalyst for a significant step forward by the Metropolitan Police in bringing to justice those responsible for the deaths of 72 people,” he told the inquiry.

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