Children have become adults and four prime ministers have come or gone, but this week, in what feels like a different era to when fire engulfed Grenfell Tower in June 2017, public inquiry hearings into the disaster will finally end.
In closing statements after thousands of hours of cross-examination spanning five years, disclosure of 320,000 documents and over £150m in taxpayer legal costs, lawyers will rest the case against local officials, global corporations, builders and politicians.
A torrent of truth about failings that preceded the deaths of 72 people has flowed before the bereaved: how ministers failed to tighten fire regulations; how the wealthy council landlord cut costs with a switch to combustible cladding; and how material suppliers cheated fire tests. But with no significant arrests, no charges and no trials there has not yet been criminal justice and none is expected for at least a couple of years.
One of those following the evidence was Tiago Alves, a 20-year-old physics undergraduate when he escaped with his father and sister from their 13th-floor flat. Today, aged 25, he has completed not just his degree, but a master’s and has started a PhD at Imperial College London. He has spent a fifth of his young life after the inquiry. But how useful has it been? Would he recommend it?
“Honestly?” he replies. “Absolutely not. It feels like everything’s been laid bare. It’s gotten to the point where everyone is to blame so much that no one’s to blame … it was literally catastrophe after catastrophe leading up to the fire, and that’s quite hard to swallow.”
Exposing the myriad of mistakes and deceits has been “extremely important”, said Alves. But it has been “delayed justice, the criminal justice … There is no finality to it.”
Scotland Yard detectives investigating possible manslaughter offences decided early on that they would wait until the inquiry concluded before recommending whether to bring criminal charges.
But identifying a single person who was most responsible for the disaster now seems “an impossible question to answer”, Alves said. Instead, societal themes have emerged which make more slippery targets for justice seekers.
Alves observed of the disaster’s key protagonists that “a lot of these people were selfish, they were greedy”.
“It’s not that they are the personification of evil, but there were aspects of their personalities and the way that they worked that made them complacent in their jobs,” he said. “We were neglected. The rules were neglected. The regulations were. Professionalism was neglected.”
His reflections may give pause to people bereaved by Covid pinning hopes on the public inquiry into the pandemic which has just begun, to deliver clear-cut justice.
Grenfell families rarely display dissatisfaction with the determination of the inquiry chair, Sir Martin Moore-Bick and his team to deliver a clear-eyed report next year that looks set to damn multiple parties. But the satisfaction of people convicted and jailed wanted by many is starting to feel a less real possibility as time passes.
Another of those who has followed proceedings closely is Adel Chaoui, who lost his cousin Farah Hamdan, her husband, Omar Belkadi, and their daughters Leena and Malak.
It was helpful the inquiry exposed the detail of how the construction companies and the council landlord behaved, he said. It proved the disaster “wasn’t some accident” and reduced the chances of it happening again.
“This was industry, allowed by our government via deregulation causing death on a massive scale,” he said. But he echoes Alves: “The only thing that would make me feel justice has been served is criminal prosecutions and prison sentences.”
Both men have been active in Grenfell United, the families’ group, pushing for reforms in social housing, building safety rules and tenants’ rights. But there has been little progress on those fronts too, with the most extensive reforms so far limited to the fire brigade.
Chaoui was struck by the inquiry’s lack of real-world effect when Liz Truss last month announced a “slashing red tape” drive. In April, inquiry barristers cross-examined government ministers about David Cameron’s “bonfire of red tape” that allowed deregulation of fire safety in a way that contributed to the disaster. The cross-examinations were far shorter than those faced by firefighters.
“If the politicians had gone through what the fire brigade went through could she have made that argument so publicly?” said Chaoui.
Now Alves’ worst fear is a repeat of the experience of the Hillsborough families. An independent panel concluded in 2012 that no Liverpool fans were responsible for the 1985 football stadium disaster, and said its main cause was a “lack of police control”. But when former Ch Supt David Duckenfield, in charge of the match, later faced charges of gross negligence manslaughter, he was acquitted.
“It found the truth, but nothing was done with the truth,” Alves said. “If I’m being cynical, [I think] the same thing is going to happen to us. It is so convoluted the way the story of Grenfell is being told by the inquiry, that it will probably get to the situation where the police will have no idea how to prosecute.”
Six things we learned at the Grenfell Inquiry
1. Trapped, choking, panicking and desperate, most people died on the top floors from the “inhalation of fire fumes”, forensic experts concluded, as combustible cladding, made by companies that knew the dangers, blazed.
2. In fire tests Celotex, the company that made combustible insulation, concealed fire retardant boards behind its foam panels that would not normally be used. It was “over-engineered to achieve a pass,” an executive admitted.
3. Arconic, which made the plastic-filled cladding that the inquiry has found were the main cause of fire spread, knew the type used on Grenfell was combustible. But an executive emailed colleagues earlier: “We have to keep [this] VERY CONFIDENTIAL!!!!”
4. There was deep antagonism between the council, the tenant management organisation and some of the residents, such as Ed Daffarn, who warned of the disaster eight months before the fire. He was one of a group that the landlord’s contractor branded “rebel residents”.
5. David Cameron’s government broke a promise to tighten fire regulations after six people died in an earlier council block fire. It had embarked on a “bonfire of red tape” and a senior civil servant said: “Ministers were very focused on avoiding anything that might impact on the economy in a negative way.”
6. The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea’s building inspector, whose job was to check the refurbishment met safety rules was chronically overworked with 130 projects to oversee after austerity-driven cuts slashed staff numbers.
