Deregulation, government failure, and tragedy: The Report of Phase 2 of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry

The Inquiry into the fire at Grenfell Tower, London, in 2017 has exposed the failures that led to the tragedy in a commendably exhaustive manner. But the explanation of those failures is seriously inadequate. First, they are attributed to deregulation, when the Inquiry itself details the ways in which the cladding of the building was subject to multiple levels of regulation. It was not an absence of regulation, but the failure of very extensive regulation to identify the risk created by building work which turned a formerly fireproof building into what the Inquiry called a ‘death trap’. Second, the Inquiry does not explain why this risk was ever run. Grenfell Tower was cladded as part of a nationwide programme of insulating tower blocks in pursuit of climate change objectives which was undertaken with inadequate consideration of the implications for fire safety. The Grenfell fire followed from insufficient concern with limits to government capacity to implement policies believed desirable.