The Grenfell Tower fire: justice delayed is justice denied
Prosecutors will ponder possible criminal charges nine years after the tower block fire that killed 72 Londoners.
The fire at Grenfell Tower in west London on 14 June 2017 kills seventy-two working class Londoners, including 18 children.
Survivors, bereaved, and residents of the Lancaster West Estate in North Kensington campaign hard in the aftermath for the truth about what caused the fire.
They demand those politicians, corporate officials, and government officers who are responsible for the fire be brought to justice – especially those responsible for wrapping Grenfell Tower in flammable cladding.
They call for swift and genuine change so that people can live safely in similar towers.
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But a criminal investigation into the fire by London’s Metropolitan Police only begins after a seven-year ‘inquisitorial’ (non-criminal) public inquiry finishes.
Inquiry chairman Sir Martin Moore-Bick, when first appointed on 29 July 2017, says: “I understand the desire of local people for justice; justice for them…will best be served by a vigorous inquiry that gets to the truth as quickly as possible.”
But Moore-Bick’s £178 million inquiry takes two years after the fire to publish a ‘Phase 1’ report on 30 October 2019. The final ‘Phase 2’ report is not published until 4 September 2024.
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The Inquiry’s appointed barristers question individuals working for national and local government and the London Fire Brigade. They also quiz those working for private sector corporations profitably supplying the Tower’s building materials, including flammable cladding materials that caused the fire to spread.
The Inquiry Panel concludes: ‘Not all of them bear the same degree of responsibility for the eventual disaster, but…all contributed to it in one way or another, in most cases through incompetence but in some cases through dishonesty and greed.’
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On 19 May 2026 London’s Metropolitan Police announces the completion of its criminal investigation – nearly nine years after the fire – and that it is ‘on track by the end of September 2026 to submit all files for charging decisions to the Crown Prosecution Service’. (See Note 1).
The Police state fifty-seven people and twenty organisations are suspects of criminal offences that include corporate manslaughter, gross negligence manslaughter, misconduct in public office, fraud, and health and safety breaches. (Notes 2,3).
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Grenfell United, and Grenfell Next of Kin, the latter made up of bereaved, survivors, and residents of the Lancaster West Estate (which includes the Grenfell Tower), react sharply to the Police announcement.
‘For our community, this is not news we meet with celebration,’ states Grenfell United. ‘No family should have to wait over ten years for justice for their loved ones…
‘The final report of the Grenfell Inquiry laid bare the shocking failures, dishonesty and disregard for human life that led to the fire. Grenfell was not a tragedy without cause. Those responsible must now be held to account.’
But Grenfell United worry potential prosecutions will not be recommended by the CPS until 2027. Trial juries might have to wait until 2029 to hear the evidence because England’s court system suffers chronic delays and a lack of funding.(4).
Some legal observers say the public inquiry ‘process’ may also undermine criminal charges brought by the CPS.
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Grenfell Next of Kin is a voice for the immediate families and friends of those killed. It states the Police announcement is of ‘little comfort to us.
‘There is a complete breakdown in trust…Confidence in the system has been shattered. The criminal investigation and justice process should always have come first and been given priority. Instead, the public inquiry was prioritised ahead of criminal accountability and delayed our justice.
‘Everything connected to Grenfell has been handled upside down and the wrong way round.’
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Grenfell Next of Kin add the Police’s criminal investigation ‘crawled behind the Public Inquiry like an afterthought’.
‘Seventy-two people killed, and instead of the largest homicide investigation, the Police were told to wait politely until the Public Inquiry had finished.’
Meanwhile, says Grenfell Next of Kin, the people involved in the circumstances leading to the fire, ‘carried on with their lives, careers, pensions, and reputations intact while the process (of the Inquiry) took priority over actual accountability’. (5).
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Postscript
The Metropolitan Police states it does not wish to pre-empt CPS decisions but claims ‘work has also begun on next steps should charges be brought’. One such next step is a plan to ‘build a replica of elements of the tower to assist any potential future juries’.
There is a deep irony in any Police plan to build even a partial replica of the Grenfell Tower. By May 2026, the actual tower is no longer widely visible as it undergoes gradual ‘deconstruction’ in advance of being replaced by a planned memorial.
Then Deputy Prime Minister, Angela Rayner, announces the ‘deconstruction’ of the Grenfell Tower on 5 February 2025. Rayner promises parts of the Tower will be ‘carefully removed and returned for inclusion’ as part of a Memorial, ‘if the community wishes’.
But, according to many local people traumatised by the fire’s lingering aftermath, Rayner failed to share a 2021 engineering report which stated the Tower’s remnant should be taken down.
‘This (deconstruction) has been hugely traumatic for those who think the world will forget what happened without the tower’s looming presence,’ says Emma Dent Coad, a local resident and former elected local politician for Kensington.
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The immediate families of 13 of the deceased make a ‘final goodbye’ visit to the Grenfell Tower in July 2025. They detect ‘handprints on the wall’ – in the communal stairwell landing area between Floors 12 and.
They also see an inscription, ‘Allah Akbar’ (God is Great)’, written in Arabic, between floors 17 and 18. The families immediately request these sections be saved for the possible memorial.
‘To destroy these elements is to erase history, memory, and proof of what happened,’ state the families. The handprints on the stairwell ‘aren’t simply marks on concrete; they’re tangible human traces of fear, survival, and resilience’.
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Officials at the Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government (MHCLG) suggest there is ‘no evidence to authenticate’ the handprints are from the night of the tragedy’.
People condemn that official remark as a ‘disgraceful and shameful dog whistle.’
A bereaved family member says: ‘You (the Government) are bringing the Tower down at a cost of millions of pounds…Even the most basic request – the preservation of a wall in the staircase with soot, handprints, and an inscription to God – is being denied.’
‘We will not let this tragedy be sanitised,’ says Karim Khalloufi, who lost his sister Khadijah Khalloufi to the fire.
‘We have no choice but to fight for our loved ones to preserve this history,’ adds Shah Aghlani, whose mother Sakina Afrasehabi and sister Fatemeh Afrasehabi were killed.
Grenfell survivors and bereaved are further angered when the MHCLG reveals the handprints will be conserved but not the Arabic phrase.
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This removal of the Grenfell Tower, trace by trace, piece by piece, floor by floor, is why Grenfell Next of Kin states:
‘Seventy-two dead. A decade of delay. No charges. No prosecutions. No accountability.
‘And an eco-system paid to make it disappear. Cha-ching.’
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Analysis: Time, Race and Class
The understandable suspicion of Grenfell’s survivors, bereaved, and local area residents is that politicians and powerful housing industry people are trying to make the rest of the UK population forget about Grenfell – especially as the remnant of the Tower is being taken down.
Nine years is a traumatic delay for people to wait for a police force to announce possible criminal charges against those responsible.
This delay is in stark contrast to the response of police and prosecutors to a fire at a tower block complex that killed 168 people in Tai Po in Hong Kong on 26 November 2025. Hong Kong authorities arrest dozens of people in March 2026.
They announce on 10 June 2026 that seven people and two companies will be charged with manslaughter and conspiracy – all less than a year after the fire.
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Of the 72 people killed by the Grenfell Tower fire, including 18 children, about 85% have been described as Black and brown people, and the remainder as white people.
Investigators and media avoid discussing ‘race’ in the aftermath of such tragedies; at best from a misguided assumption this might drain public compassion for the victims. At worst, they avoid ‘race’ to deny a stark reality.
This uncomfortable yet brutal reality is that race and class inequality make disasters like Grenfell very likely to happen. Grenfell exposes how working class people – of all ethnicities, including white people – are concentrated in unsafe housing. Their concerns about maintenance, repairs, defects, and fire dangers are routinely ignored by unaccountable housing managers.
Disturbingly, nine years on, politicians and government officials do not seem to know how many UK buildings feature dangerous cladding, or how much it will cost or how long it will take to strip such cladding. An estimated three million working class people fear this uncertainty and are forced to live with the consequences, such as not being able to insure and sell their homes.
A society where such class and race inequalities – especially in housing – are tolerated daily and reproduced over decades should not be shocked that tragedies like Grenfell happen. Instead, any society like this should be surprised that similar housing tragedies do not happen more often.
A truth gaining acceptance is that London and other UK cities – and rural areas too – need to provide people with a new mass of genuinely affordable public – or council – housing.
Such housing must also be run by fully accountable housing managers who respect the meaningful involvement of all working class residents whether they be Black, brown or white.
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Notes
- The Metropolitan Police states on 19 May it has 220 investigators working to submit charging decision files to the Crown Prosecution Service by September. Fifteen of 20 files are already with the CPS. Ten of 14 ‘overarching evidence files’ are complete.
- The Police claims it has examined the role of 15,000 individuals and 700 organisations, with 14,400 statements taken.
- The Police stores 27,000 exhibits in a warehouse, including Grenfell Tower cladding, insulation, doors, and windows.
- Grenfell United campaigns for justice for survivors, bereaved, and residents impacted by the fire.
- Grenfell Next of Kin advocates for the parents, partners, children, siblings, grandparents, and grandchildren of those killed because of the Grenfell Tower fire.
- Then Prime Minister Theresa May announces a public inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005 on 15 June 2017, appointing Sir Martin Moore-Bick as chairman. Moore-Bick receives renumeration from the inquiry of over £210,000 for 2018-19. Phase 1 focuses on the events on the night of 14 June 2017, and reports in October 2019. Phase 2 examines the causes of those events, and the final report is published in September 2024.
- The Inquiry concludes ‘the simple truth is that the deaths were all avoidable and that those who lived in the tower were badly failed over a number of years and in a number of different ways by those responsible for ensuring the safety of the building and its occupants’.
- ‘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 residential buildings, the architect, Studio E, the principal contractor, Rydon Maintenance Ltd, and some of its sub-contractors, in particular, Harley Curtain Wall Ltd and its successor Harley Facades Ltd, some of the consultants, in particular the fire engineer, Exova Warringtonfire Ltd, the local authority’s building control department and the London Fire Brigade.
- ‘Not all of them bear the same degree of responsibility for the eventual disaster, but, as our reports show, all contributed to it in one way or another, in most cases through incompetence but in some cases through dishonesty and greed.’ (Statement on Publication of Phase 2 Report, Grenfell Tower Inquiry, 4 September 2024).
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© Paul Coleman, London Intelligence, May 2026, London.
