The Department for Communities and Local Government was poorly run, complacent and defensive in its approach to fire safety, the final report of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry has found.
The report concludes that the 2017 fire, which claimed 72 lives, was the “culmination of decades of failure by central government and other bodies in positions of responsibility in the construction industry to look carefully into the danger of incorporating combustible materials into the external walls of high-rise residential buildings and to act on the information available to them”.
It says the government had many opportunities to identify these risks. By 2016, the predecessor department to today's MHCLG, which was responsible for Building Regulations and statutory guidance at the time of the fire, was “well aware of those risks, but failed to act on what it knew”.
The department was “poorly run” in that it gave the official with day-to-day responsibility for England’s Building Regulations and Approved Document B – which provides guidance on meeting the regulations – “too much freedom of action without adequate oversight”, the report says.
The civil servant in question “failed to bring to the attention of more senior officials the serious risks of which he had become aware, and they in turn failed to supervise him properly or to satisfy themselves that his response to matters affecting the safety of people’s lives was appropriate", it says.
"It was a serious failure to allow such an important area of activity to remain in the hands of one relatively junior official.”
The report says officials and some ministers were also “defensive and dismissive” when MPs raised concerns about the fire safety of cladding before the Grenfell disaster and that DCLG “displayed a complacent and at times defensive attitude to matters affecting fire safety”.
Following the 2009 fire at Lakanal House in Southwark, in which six people died, the coroner recommended that Approved Document B be reviewed. However, the report says the coroner's recommendations “were not treated with any sense of urgency and officials did not explain clearly to the secretary of state what steps were required to comply with them”.
It says similarly legitimate concerns about cladding fire risks raised by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Fire Safety were “repeatedly met with a defensive and dismissive attitude by officials and some ministers” and portions blame on the government’s deregulatory focus.
“In the years that followed the Lakanal House fire, the government’s deregulatory agenda, enthusiastically supported by some junior ministers and the secretary of state, dominated the department’s thinking to such an extent that even matters affecting the safety of life were ignored, delayed or disregarded,” the report adds.
Eric Pickles, who was the secretary of state in the department from 2010 to 2015, told the inquiry in cross-examination that the Building Regulations were exempt from the anti-regulation drive. But the inquiry said this evidence was “flatly contradicted by that of his officials and by the contemporaneous documents”.
It added: “The department accepted that the policy on deregulation being promoted across government since 2010 created an environment in which officials working on Building Regulations felt unable to propose regulatory interventions or refer their concerns to more senior managers.”
The report also criticises the “complex and fragmented” arrangements for regulating the construction industry, saying the degree of fragmentation “was a recipe for inefficiency and an obstacle to effective regulation”.
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Home Office and Cabinet Office have published the report on GOV.UK, alongside a comment which states: “The government will carefully consider its recommendations, to ensure that such a tragedy can never occur again”.
In a statement to parliament, the prime minister, Keir Starmer said the report had found "substantial and widespread failings".
"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.
"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.
"I would like to thank Sir Martin, his panel of Thouria Istephan and Ali Akbor, and the inquiry team for their thorough work on producing this report and for their years of work on this inquiry."