Editorials | The Guardian

The Guardian view on the Grenfell inquiry: hear the victims’ voices | Editorial

Editorial — Sun, 10 Dec 2017 18:14:40 GMT

The government appears to want a narrow investigation of the technical failings that led to the catastrophic fire in west London. That will only add to the families’ sense of neglect

Exactly six months after the Grenfell Tower fire in which 71 people died, the first formal sessions of the inquiry begin on Monday. What happens between then and Tuesday evening in Holborn Bars, the great Victorian red brick building in the centre of London chosen to host the public hearings, is likely to be decisive in the inquiry’s success or failure. The survivors and the families of the victims are still profoundly mistrustful of the state that failed them so catastrophically on the night of 14 June. There is a great deal to be done if they are to have confidence in the inquiry’s findings.

The tragic – and, many believe, wilful – failure of central and local government to respond to tenants’ well-founded concerns about the management of their block, and the resistance at ministerial level to enacting recommendations made by an earlier inquiry into the Lakanal House fire in a similar block in south London in 2009 is only the start of the charge sheet that has so undermined confidence. The immediate response from the prime minister down to individual Kensington and Chelsea councillors was pitiable. The institutional inadequacies, newly itemised in a report by the neighbouring London borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, found a total absence of leadership. And even now, six months later, 103 families, including 29 with children, are still in emergency accommodation, waiting to be rehoused. That history alone puts an exceptional burden on the inquiry.

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