Today the Grenfell Inquiry published its second and final report into the circumstances leading up to and surrounding the fire at Grenfell Tower on 14 June 2017.
Our focus today is first and foremost on the Grenfell community.
The Inquiry Report spells out what we have known for years:
- weak regulations left the door wide open for corruption and incompetence
- successive governments have cared more about cosy relationships with house builders than they have about the people who live in these homes
- manufacturers and developers have wilfully cut corners to make a quick profit.
Basic justice dictates that there must now be accountability from those who could have prevented this tragedy and chose not to. Criminal charges should be brought as swiftly as possible.
The Grenfell Inquiry should be a landmark case. Its recommendations point the way out of this: therefore, Government should commit to implementing every single one of the Inquiry’s recommendations, in full, without delay.
This is, and always has been, about people. People must finally be put before profit.
The legacy of Grenfell must be that safety is not an add-on but a starting point for people’s homes.
Residents who raise safety concerns about their homes should be listened to and certainly not dismissed as troublemakers by organisations and companies who themselves do not have the technical competence to assess risk.
We have all seen too many broken promises since the scale of this crisis has come to light. We now ask Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner to do what is necessary to put right this mess.
- First, our homes must be made safe.
- Those who are responsible should be made to pay, and where it warrants, should be held accountable in law.
- And lasting and progressive change needs to be made to the building industry in this country to ensure that this can never happen again.
Hundreds of thousands of people are still living in homes with the same risk that there was in Grenfell seven years ago. This must change quickly.
Grenfell was a disaster. Its legacy should not also be a tragedy.
The End Our Cladding Scandal campaign calls on the Government to lead an urgent, national effort to fix the building safety crisis.
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