Grenfell: Inquiry calls for urgent action to prioritise safety of disabled residents of high-rise flats

The final report of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry has told the government to take urgent action to prioritise the safety of disabled people and other “vulnerable” residents who live in high-rise residential buildings.

The 1,700-page report was published yesterday (Wednesday) and made a series of recommendations to improve the protection of disabled residents, following years of “persistent indifference” among those responsible for their safety at Grenfell Tower.

The report found that “matters affecting the safety of life were ignored, delayed or disregarded” by the Conservative-led government in the years after the Lakanal House fire in 2009, due to a “deregulatory agenda” which was “enthusiastically supported” by ministers.

Concerns that new fire safety guidance did not include advice on evacuating disabled people from high-rise buildings were “simply brushed aside”, the report says, because the coalition government at the time “considered it too difficult to find a solution to the problem”.

The Grenfell Tower fire, which began in the early hours of 14 June 2017, led to the deaths of 72 people, and initial analysis of the final report suggests about 20 of them were disabled.

The inquiry’s chair, Sir Martin Moore-Bick, said 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 who were responsible for ensuring the safety of the building and its occupants”.

Those who failed them included successive governments, Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO) – which took over management of Kensington and Chelsea council’s housing in 1995 – the council, London Fire Brigade, the construction industry, and a string of companies involved in a refurbishment of Grenfell Tower before the fire.

Sir Martin criticised the “persistent failure to give sufficient importance to the demands of fire safety, particularly the safety of vulnerable people”.

He said KCTMO had “failed to maintain a reasonably accurate record of those residents of the tower who were vulnerable for one reason or another and likely to need help to escape if a fire occurred” (see separate story).

The report’s summary says the council and KCTMO were jointly responsible for the management of fire safety at Grenfell Tower, and the years between 2009 and 2017 “were marked by a persistent indifference to fire safety, particularly the safety of vulnerable people”.

Among the report’s recommendations, it says the definition of a “higher-risk building” should be reviewed “urgently” so it depends partly on whether there are disabled residents who might find it difficult to evacuate in an emergency, rather than just depending on the building’s height.

Guidance on preparing for emergencies should place greater emphasis on the need to identify “vulnerable” people and be consistent with the Equality Act, it says.

The report also recommends a change to guidance around the “stay put” policy – where residents are advised to stay in their flat if there is a fire in another flat in the building, as long as the heat or smoke is not affecting them – so it includes the need for an evaluation of the time disabled residents need to evacuate from a building.

And it repeats recommendations from the inquiry’s first report, in 2019, that owners and managers of high-rise residential buildings should be legally required to prepare a personal emergency evacuation plan (PEEP) for all residents who may find it difficult to “self-evacuate”, and to include current information about those residents and their PEEPs in an information box that can be accessed by firefighters.

The inquiry calls for “further consideration” of the PEEPs recommendations by the government.

The new Labour government appears to have accepted at least part of these recommendations, as it had already announced it would bring forward proposals relating to PEEPs this autumn to “improve the fire safety and evacuation of disabled/vulnerable residents in high-rise and higher-risk residential buildings in England”.

Rushanara Ali, the junior minister for building safety and homelessness, said disabled people would be entitled to “a person-centred risk assessment to identify appropriate equipment and adjustments to aid their fire safety/evacuation, as well as a ‘Residential PEEPs statement’ that records what vulnerable residents should do in the event of a fire”.

She said the government would provide funding next year for social housing providers “to begin this important work”.

Picture: Close-up of Grenfell Tower with banners in June 2018 (c) by Carcharoth is licensed under Creative CommonsAttribution-Share Alike 4.0 International

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